a short meditation on being lucky

Old and New

View of Churchyard

I heard about a man who went into hospital expecting to come out better but finds he has days to live.   He is frightened and described as panicking and his story has made me consider the great gift of being alive, of being well, of having a roof over my head, of having company and enough food and even more of being free.  It is so easy to find something to complain about; the weather, the electricity, the government, the driver in front of you, the way people behave in general and in particular and everything considered in relation to you as a most important individual.  It isn't until that individual life is called into question that you might just look around and see what fortune has bestowed on you.  We are in a small cottage in Suffolk which we have had in our family for 40 years!  It is packed with our memories, times with children playing outside, going down on the farmer's tractor to the marshes in the morning, swimming in the brown North Sea and bicycling over the flat East Anglian landscape but beyond our memories, there are years of people who have been born, lived and died here, gone to school here, shopped here, holidayed here under the huge East Anglian sky.  Our lives are really deeply insignificant in some ways, significant only in what we do with them and who we owe them to. Significant in remembering to thank God or our neighbour for simply being.

Even the words have faded

Meditation and being a vegetarian!

charred sausages!

beautiful red apples

See here 4 charred sausages!  They were put in the oven at lunchtime and forgotten!  Then, in meditation, as the mind fell still, they were remembered!  So, what does a meditator do, does she get up and move them or does she just carry on?  Common sense is allowed to operate and  I knew that they were beyond redemption so I carried on.  But if there had been a fire, I would have got up and called the fire brigade.  Meditation is practical and sometimes you may be as still as still and you will get a piece of vital information and you are meant to take notice of it.  Now look at the other two photographs, red apples and a great big basket of walnuts and doesn't it make you wonder why you would ever think a sausage even in its cheery sausage and mashness would ever attract you as much as these!

Walnuts

Anxiety and meditation, No slacking allowed

No slacking! 

If you wake up and start to think anxious thoughts, let me say from experience that you absolutely aren't going to sort them out by lying in that warm bed turning them over and over, you are better to get straight up and move.  Anxious thoughts are sticky things but they don't hang around for long if you get out of bed and brave the cold for starters and shower and fiddle about putting things in order.  Then meditate,  and leave those thoughts outside the door.  If they try and come in, know them for what they are and pay them no attention until you need to.  Afterwards, sit down with a cup of tea or coffee and better still, with a friend and examine the things which are bothering you and see if you can do something about them.

holding your hat on in the teeth of a gale

There are storm force winds piling in across the country and of course, this is the day we are driving right across the country; from Cambridgeshire to Oxfordshire to Hampshire and we will be meeting weather all the way.  So we will have to  hold our mettle as well and hold on our hats in the teeth of the gale when we get there.  There is such a temptation to stay here, to cite the weather as the reason why we shouldn't go but there is a compelling reason for going.  I hardly need to give you the analogy of using determination to do the thing you would perhaps rather not do; in my mind there has to be a compelling reason to meditate and this is a blog about meditation of course I am going to say that you need to be determined to meditate even if you don't really feel like it.  You can see who isn't at all determined to do anything other than be as comfortable as they can, no going out in the wind for them! and no meditation either today.

David Beckham hangs up his football boots

In an interview yesterday, David Beckham talks about life after football, his amazement at being a celebrity and the delight of being at home.  He also said that there was some
regret at no longer  playing.  I thought that we all have little regrets when we can't do something any more because even if we have decided to stop skiing or wind-surfing or climbing mountains, we usually have some other thing we are about to take up; a course in this or that or taking time to go to places we haven't been able to go to before.  We don't notice that we are all moving in one direction all the time, from a starting point to an ending point until someone suddenly flags up the exit flag.  So, why not take a regular break from the escalator of life, just spend a little time every day developing a new life skill, the skill of stillness.  It will not only benefit the day but benefit the way out.

Meditation and not being vegetarian

I read about Martin Shaw who had a spiritual epiphany when he was a young man and took to a Hindu-based Philosophy, Sant Mat. He gave up alcohol, drugs and meat which is totally admirable.  I started my spiritual quest when I was in my twenties too with a minor epiphany which literally opened the heart to enquire into things I had taken for granted.  So I am a hybrid, a mongrel philosopher with Christian faith and a continuing enquiry into philosophy.  I have been attending philosophy classes at the School of Economic Science for 40 years and this was where I discovered meditation and that was over 35 years ago.
I am sure that giving up alcohol and meat (and sex for some) aids the spiritual quest but the promise of meditation is that it does the whole works.  It takes you beyond those desires and needs.   As long as you really give yourself to it, it will take you to your goal.  And as it belongs to no faith or gender group, it is beyond the politics of religion which tend to divide people one from another.  One day, not when I choose, the appetites will give up just as the body ages without my doing anything about it, but until that moment, my discipline will just be meditation coupled with clearing the mind and heart of the old tyrants of jealousy, hatred, greed and vanity.   The rest of the can of worms should diminish once the bad old tyrants have given up their hold.
If you find this interesting, and have a question about  meditation and you live in London, come along to St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 20th at 10.00 am and find out more.  The event there is called JUSTTHISDAY  and it has brilliant speakers and is a chance to find out how brilliant meditation is.

www.justthisday.org

Project Wild Thing and Wonder

Children are being encouraged to go out!!  I think that most Grannies will be pleased with this news.  A  documentary film, released today will encourage children to get out there and discover the sights, sounds and smells of nature.  The film is called Project Wild Thing. David Bond, the director says children have "become disconnected from nature.... and we need to make more space for wild time in children's daily routine".
From the meditator's perspective, this move outside the limited world has to be a good thing.  Whilst nobody would deny that the internet is a wonder, somehow receiving stimulus from a small square which can manipulate feelings with images is a poor substitute for the reality of the wonder of a live world.  The world of nature is an educator, it shows things coming and going, growing and dying back, it tells a truth about life displaying itself in its many guises and it invites questions, great big universal questions about what has brought the whole great wonderful world into existence, what sustains it and what it might return to.   This is Alfie's hen, hatched in an incubator in London, come to live in the country as a small chick, and now happily at home in the big outdoors.  Thanks Alfie, your hen is looking forward to seeing you at Christmas and laying you some especially brown eggs.

Meditation and a bit of London fun

I hadn't seen these two for ages and they don't even live in Singapore or Dubai!  So, this was a triumph of planning and very good fun.  It took determination too because they are so busy with tag rugby, tennis, guitar playing, riding, school and half term plans.  It is the same with meditation, you have to determine that no matter how many things you have to do, you WILL sit down twice a day and meditate, you won't think or plan or garden or stay in bed, you will reason that becoming still connects you with something you love just as determining to see those grandchildren connects you with those you love.  We made a plan to meet regularly in the second half of the term and week by week to eat our way up the Northcote Road, fish and chip shop by burger bar by frozen yogurt and ice cream parlour, pizzeria and tapas restaurant.  We hope we can!

Meditation like keeping your hat on in a high wind

Sister Wendy Beckett painted by Mary Cook

Meditating when your mind is heavy with thoughts  is like walking in a high wind trying to keep your hat on.  You have to keep your hand on the hat and it is the same with meditation, you have to keep your mind steady or steady it up when it goes walkabout.  The Dalai Lama speaks of calm abiding and consideration of the true nature of emptiness which is helpful because agitation or thoughts leading to particular feelings are the very opposite of calm abiding and are clearly not a state of emptiness.  And in calm abiding where no thought intrudes, there is a wonderful peace which is worth tramping through the wild winds of the mind to get to.
Trying to keep your mind steady by giving it things, by distracting it with pleasures or numbing it with mind changing substances is a poor substitute for this peace because none of those things give lasting peace of mind.  But the trouble is we think that they will so off we set off into life forgetting that there will be high drama, passions, fury, jealousy, vanity and unkindness, the high winds, beastly snow and roaring heat of the world of the mind.  Sister Wendy Beckett said of stillness that Be Still and Know that I am God means that we can't "know" the unchanging unless we are still.

good for Dot

Mark Zuckerberg's sister Randi, who has a 2 year old child, has written a book for children called DOT.  Dot is a small bright child who loves technology to the point of obsession.  But a little push in the right direction gives Dot a bigger view and she finds she is better off when she looks up from the screen.

www.justthisday.org

This ties in a bit with the .b programme, see the dot before the b? This programme comes out of the Mindfulness in Schools project and suggests that stopping breathing and BE is a good tool.  So, two recommendations for the meditator or would be meditator or meditator with grandchildren wanting to introduce them to a world beyond the internet and out into the the natural world.  Get Dot. for yourself to read to the grandchildren, it's washable too.  And explore the .b programme.  This is the way forward to wonder. And once you are wondering, then you begin to question and all questions have answers, good questions especially get good answers.
And you can come and listen to 4 wonderful people talking about all this on November 20th at St Martin-in-the-Fields.  The programme starts at 9.00 am, and the speakers speak at 10.30 am.  Visit the Just this Day website for information  and then get there as early as you can, it will be very full.

When everything is going wrong, MEDITATE

It looked like an easy morning but whoever is in charge of things thought it would be a good test to put everything on fast forward and then tip buckets of water out of the sky all over my uncovered head!  The telephone rings, a delivery van arrives, the dryer breaks, the puppy chews the edge of the carpet and my life partner (husband) gets in a flap.
And we are meditators who aren't even trying to get to work through traffic and rain, we aren't trying to catch a train, conduct an orchestra, operate on a patient or drive an ambulance.  We aren't experiencing any physical difficulties and we find a morning like this a bit testing!  What it must be like for people who are struggling and don't have any idea that difficulties might just be tests makes the mind boggle.  Although of course a meditator's mind shouldn't boggle, it should just sail onwards peacefully and get the dryer mended, take in the delivery, answer the telephone and sort out both the life partner and the puppy! And meditate.

Meditation and exercise or meditation as exercise

My morning meditator has taken up running, she is going to run the marathon and she is so disciplined. This is interesting because discipline is the key to both things.  You wouldn't do any discipline if you didn't think that discipline wasn't going to produce some result would you?  But if you thought that you could turn into Usain Bolt or Jessica Ennis and that was your aim, you would go to all that discomfort of running through the dark rainy streets, you would buy into the required lycra leggings and very expensive shoes and you would be determined.  So, if you really thought that meditation was going to produce a desired result, and that all that was required of you was to sit for half an hour twice a day and bring your mind to a still point and there was no mud or rain or lycra, just a half hour sitting, wouldn't you do that?

So, what are the benefits of both; first, you come out of your comfort zone and find that you can accomplish far more than you had thought.  Second, you develop concentration.  Running certainly makes for a fit body but I think that meditation makes you look younger.  Certainly judging by the 85+ group I have met, they look terrific.  The difference though is in the stopping which meditation brings.  Everything about running is movement, getting from a to b, running so many miles in a particular time and that is fine.  Meditation should help to discover the dimension which isn't going anywhere, is just what it is, ever the same and peaceful.  It just requires you to switch off your forward moving button and simply stop.  These three ladies have meditated for over 40 years each, so 30 minutes twice a day for 40 years is 365 x 60 x 40 and that adds up to 876000 minutes.  You could perhaps knock off 6000 of those minutes for days when it wasn't possible.  They look good don't they?

Imagine if they meditated what a difference it would make!

Just imagine that some of the most impossible cross people you have heard about started to meditate!  I hardly like to mention names but if Mr Assad started or Mr Mugabe perhaps took to a peaceful life, it just wouldn't be possible for them to maintain hostility towards people who they think are different to them.  That's what maintains hostility, just thinking that someone is different to you so you can think about them as an object.  Even intense passion can be based on the idea that someone is desirable and if that idea isn't transcended, the long term outlook for the intense love isn't great.  Perhaps that's why so many marriages hit the rocks, it's not for lack of wanting it to work, it's just that we think we will gain something from the other person.  If you think you aren't going to either lose or gain anything but you might just be able to face things together and help one another, you have a good recipe for life.  And if Mr Assad and Mr Mugabe realised  that everybody in their respective countries could be happy if they worked together, we would have a lot more people able to live a full life.  So if you think you are a bit of a tyrant  but you want to stop being one, try meditation!
Even our three dogs are more peaceful for joining in our meditation. See below, he's not asleep really, he's meditating!

Clear proof that meditation makes for happiness

Here is a room full of people before meditation!  They aren't very happy are they?

Before

  Now, take these 21 people, (average age 80 +) away for 2 days of meditation and philosophy and add some very good cooking, very good friendships and music in the evening and see how happy they become!  Also the photographer/blogger/meditator became happier and happier too.  Conclusion, meditation is a great aid to happiness and happiness is infectious.  See the photograph below which proves it

After!

Dalai Lama and Just this Day

This photograph of the Dalai Lama in Amritsar in 2007 is of him joining many people who believe that stillness makes a difference at a particular time on a particular day.  Just this Day.  You can see that half those on the stage with him at the Interfaith meeting joined in and half look a bit busy but his example must works if half of them join in!  He must have developed the ability to be still by practicing it and what an example that is.  The other example he has set so dramatically is in having stayed equable and open to dialogue whilst in exile.  Would we manage to stay balanced if we had been exiled from our home?  Stillness and balance must be connected don't you think? so if we practice stillness we are practicing balance and that is a practical proposition.  Meditation is a practical proposition.  Practice with us on November 20th this year and make every next day after that Just this Day.

Meditation and the hourglass or egg timer

I call them egg timers but they were based on what we originally called hourglasses; delicate glass bowls with a pinched waist, sand which could pass from the top to the bottom through the little waist.   Once the sand is in one bowl the other one is empty so if you want a perfect egg you use your egg timer to time it.  See the egg below and imagine how long that would take to boil!  The empty side of the egg timer is a great analogy for meditation and emptiness.  The recommended time to meditate is half an hour and the empty glass bowl is what the mind is aiming for.  Once the bowl is empty, it is easy to realise that the space inside the bowl is the same as the vast empty space outside.  But what might we mean by empty? don't we just mean absence of anything so perhaps that emptiness is just a fullness, a totality.

Meditation helps the bruised ego!

I get a real smack in the ego so that every fibre of it is smarting.   I know that this smarting is not what should happen to a philosophic blogging aged meditator but it has and so what do I do.  To start with I resist every move in the mind to justify why I should fight back and determine that I will look at the event from the emptiness that the Dalai Lama commends.  I also think about the real difficulties that people I know are facing and conclude that ego-smarting is ego writ large.  Does this work?  It does take a bit of time to reestablish equilibrium but I know that if I was the Dalai Lama or the female equivalent, there wouldn't be a tremor let alone a tear.    And I meditate for the full half hour with absolute determination to not go to the wound which is like a toothache that the tongue longs to go towards and then I go out to supper with my daughter and we chatter and eat a pizza and drink a very nice glass of red wine.  Note to self, this getting over bad things should be possible just with meditation but family helps when you haven't managed to completely banish it on your own.  Thanks Mary.

Meditation and Dying

When the vicar intones the words 'in the midst of life we are in death' they sound a million miles away don't they?  Well they aren't and even if you look out of the window at this time of year, you see that everything is getting ready to pack up until the spring.  Leaves die, flowers drop, stems wither.  And now we are in the Grandparent zone, our friends and relatives get the sorts of diseases and conditions which mean life is receding.  We don't like this bit because it whispers our own mortality but as long as it is at one remove, we find ourselves still planning future events.  This optimism is good but we should be optimistic with an eye to the facts of life which aren't just about the birds and bees.  The facts of life are that that which is born will die, that which comes into being, will depart.  Meditating with this fact can help to lessen the alarm we feel when we hear that someone we love has got a bit closer to the exit. It means we can look the exit in the eye and realise it is just a word over something bigger than we see with our ordinary eye.  It is probably and hopefully where fullness of being is.  The main trouble is that we have to do this ourselves, we have to prepare by watching others undertake the journey and prepare by trying out being without the things which define us in meditation.  So, that is the practice, every day you take yourself to the exit and rest there so you get used to it and perhaps experience being free of the stuff your life has become.

Meditation and Mindfulness

Every week I go to a school where the girls are introduced to meditation and are given mentoring help with this practice through their school life.  You can imagine just what the level of activity is like when  all the bustle of a school is going on round you and your student.  There is the rest of the school singing a really catchy tune and going up and down the scales, there are feet passing by and there is simply the energy of over 500 people in one building, all of whom are brimming with life.
This week my student and I were considering just how difficult it is to keep the attention steady whilst all this stuff is going on around you and we came to a view that if you just let the activity be what it is, it might be easier than trying to stop the ear from following the sounds and the inner singer from trying to join in with the music.  And it makes a difference, it really does. There I was, meditating and happy with the sounds going on and I found that I didn't need to project my ear out through the space to catch them.  To be able to see what the mind is doing through meditation is really what we now term mindfulness.
On November 20th, Richard Burnett a teacher at Tonbridge School who co founded the Mindfulness in Schools programme will be speaking at an event at St Martin-in-the-Fields.  The subject is Meditation, it's tradition, practice and relevance today.  The other speakers will be talking about the tradition and practice and he will be talking about it's relevance to young people today.  The event is called just this day and there is room for you to come too!  See the details and register on the just this day website

A Meditation on bodies and their usefulness.

 If we did a Which report on bodies, it might say a few things that would give us pause for reflection and make us wonder if we want to own one or just rent one when we need it.  If we own it, we get everything which goes with it.  Babies are both soft and sweet but also unable to do anything for themselves and although their smiles are wonderful, they also cry a lot which tells me that this isn't always a happy state to be in.  Then take children, when you are one, it can be terrific fun but that might depend on where you were; to be born in a civilised and comfortable place with running water and plenty of food, friends and family is one thing but to be born in a war zone or be deprived of comfort and love is another.  To have children of your own is both a wonder and a worry, take it from me, I have had enough children to know that it is a mixed bag!   Then the adult world and the explosion of the world of possibilities is a bit two sided! great if it is going well, you are popular, clever and good looking and you have a job and a happy life but in my memory, being a young adult wasn't all a bowl of cherries.  Then being a GROWN-UP! do you ever think you are? don't we always think there might be something more to come, that we aren't quite complete.  Of course, there are some solid kindly happy grown ups but if the media is a guide, then there are rather a lot of reports of unhappy dysfunctional adults with eating disorders, addictions, sexual hang ups, family crises and family break ups.  So, it is a complex situation and even if you are a hero and happy, if you think you are the owner of your body, giving it up will not be easy even if you are offered a better one next time. Meditating on the inconstancy of the bodily situation makes me think that renting a body is better, using it and just giving it back when you don't need it anymore.  It is a wonderful amazing piece of kit but even if you have eaten every delicious thing, had a deliriously happy life, been an amazing success at what you do and everybody loves you, handing in the body regularly which is possible during meditation makes you less dependent on what it can provide.  Not owning it is a life saver.  It means it doesn't own you either!

Why not take the Dalai Lama's advice?

The Dalai Lama in our daily reading says that there are stages in meditation; I think of them as rungs on a ladder and about half way up the ladder when you think you are doing ok, you must watch for laxity and excitement.  The cure he says is in seeing them and refocussing on your object of meditation.  This is  helpful because laxity and excitement are exactly what happens: you get going, peace descends and then the great big brilliant thought comes, your version of the Higgs Bosun moment.  In all it's glory, the perfect plan, the perfect cake, the perfect lesson, the perfect speech and now, the perfect blog.  You know you shouldn't be thinking this thought just now but back it comes flagging up its complete brilliance and you stagger to the end of that meditation.  BUT he says the cure is watching what is going on and refocussing on the object of meditation and the goal is calm abiding when the body and mind are clear and happy and content not to move.  I have put the photograph of the cake below to remind myself that pride in cakes is often misplaced especially when one small grandson knows where the cake is and where you aren't and takes the opportunity of exercising his small and determined person to get on the stool and take great goudges out of the top of it!  Thanks Archie for your acting as a philosophical opportunity!!!

Meditation and character building in South Africa

Children who can find stillness in themselves get the chance of developing real character.  

You have followed the transparent man over the last two days, now I am going to introduce you to a remarkable woman who has started a remarkable school.  Her secret is meditation!  Her job  is keeping a school with high aspirations and little finance going.  Here children are given access to being still as a background to their education.  This school is unusual, it is in Durban, South Africa and it is open to children from less well off backgrounds whose one reason for being there is that their parents have a vision for them and that they and their parents are prepared to make sacrifices to get there and stay there.   Welcome to St James School Durban where one woman and her team of teachers and wellwishers are creating characters who could be a new generation of people with the qualities of Nelson Mandela.  They will learn about truthfulness, discipline and the role of a good citizen.   In South Africa if you can't buy an elite education, education for children in the State sector is basic and lacks the energy to inspire children to achieve their full potential.  Not so St James which demands the highest commitment from children, teachers and parents to be great.  The school is helped by financial help from good people in South Africa and outside who can see that this is a story worth supporting.   Each St James child's family must pay what they can towards the education.  If you should be inspired to find out more you should go to the website and watch the dvd which tells the story of Clifford.  He has to travel for over 2 hours to get to school and he tells you why this education will make the difference for him. The school is the inspiration of the Head Teacher, Anisha Ramlaul and her inspiration draws on a vision she has of what a human being can be.  It is this inspiration which carries the school, Anisha is inwardly disciplined, outwardly orderly and totally committed to the welfare of the children and of South Africa.  The older children are introduced to meditation and you can see them meditating in the dvd and you will see that they are really turned inward and focussed.  South Africa needs children who have character enough to be truthful and this is an education which might just meet that need.  Good luck Anisha and the children in St James School in Durban South Africa.  Keep meditating.

Meditation and Jealousy

Clear and transparent

This image of transparency, of emptiness has set a goal for me.  If the Dalai Lama says that to be truly compassionate we should meditate on the no-thingness at the centre of our being, why does he say it?  If you or I observe the way emotions rise on the back of what we see or hear or touch, we may see that those emotions don't really relate to the thing we are seeing or touching or hearing, they are all about the individual me I think I am.  

At a meeting in Cambridge earlier in the year, Dadi Janki, the spiritual leader of the Brahma Kumaris, aged 95! said the real cause of misery was jealousy.  So  I set myself to see how this works.  

Do you know how jealousy feels?  It is uncomfortable and it is all about me.  It isn't envy because envy wants something it hasn't got.  Jealousy is feeling separated and jealous of your own individual sense of self.  If you feel unappreciated, it is jealousy of what you think you are or have done and it makes that transparent space green.   If you see it, you have a few choices, you can choose to cut yourself off, to be miffed and to justify your miffdom by blaming the person who hasn't appreciated you and your good works.  This is not a good choice because you are trapped in  your justification.  You can pretend you aren't hurting but you keep the jealousy in a box inside which you feed on when no one is around.  I think this just concentrates the green substance into a place where every time the individual you gets into a similar position out it comes and curls round your feeling and your thinking and worse, your speaking and your actions.  This choice is based on what you have a taste for.  I bet, like me that you didn't think you had a taste for jealousy but to be honest, while you have a touch of jealousy, you haven't become transparent.   You do have the choice of finding a way to become transparent but to have that choice, you need to see that transparency is worth working for.

Meditation on the transparent and clear reality of who we are gives a space for transforming the things we have taken to be ourselves into something cleaner.    You will gather from today's blog that this is a work in progress!

Meditation and perception

 WHAT IS HE? WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT AM I?
Do you think that you are looking at a man or a space?  Or are you looking at both?  This man is both.  He is really the space, the feel of him is created by layers of perspex which have his shape cut OUT, so although you confidently look and see a man, you are really looking at a space which has the shape of a man.  This shows how the connection between the eye and the mind operates and how quickly we name something a thing when it may not be just that thing, it may just be a name and a form on a space.  So we could say that the space or the no thing gives place to the thing.  The Dalai Lama in AN OPEN HEART PRACTICING COMPASSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE says we should meditate on the NO THING to achieve compassion.  It may help us to see that our perceptions of people as distinct individuals isn't the whole story of who they are and that may help us to find out who we are.  This man is about to go on a journey to Philadelphia!  He and his creator, Tom Hiscocks were met by some discerning people who offered him a home.  This may make a change to the garage which he has been in for the last few months.  Curiously we all feel a bit sad he is going!  But who, after all, is he?  If you want to see more of him and his friends click on the Tom Hiscocks.  And you might also wonder if Tom Hiscocks was a meditator?

Meditation, the best retirement plan

I have promised not to blog or get involved in any creative stuff before meditating, after all, I can't recommend meditation to anyone if I don't really test it and try it myself.  So, reporting from the coalface of meditation and life, these are the thoughts which have been in my mind over this weekend.. I have realised that the passing show is so quick that even your pleasures pains are quickly over, your family grows up without your permission and even if you are very lucky and they still visit you, they have moved on.  Each springy step across the grass is measured, from the first toddling one to the last few rather painful ones and it would be foolish not to take this on board.  After all we take a lot of trouble with finding the best pension option and we go to the doctor and hope to keep healthy, these are two sensible things to do.  It seems a good idea to consider keeping our actual Self safe too and meditation definately helps to focus the eye, or the I on something steadier than all that is moving and changing.  Plus, you build up a steadiness inside which is useful in the everyday movements of life and I hope might be useful to others round you.  Read more about the picture below tomorrow!

We waved off our friends from the US this morning, goodbyes and hugs and smiles and a bit of sadness, after all, we don't know when or if we will see them again.  To have meditated on the still in the moving, helps.  And it concentrates the mind on the unimportance of trivial things and the huge importance of human relationships.

Perfect coming from perfect, Meditation and Creativity

little perfect beignets

Daniel Clifford and sous chef

Everything pointed to perfection, and we noticed.  Was it the brilliant weather and the light which woke us up to the fact of perfection, or was it that little slipped in half hour of meditation which alerted us to the fact that there is a source beyond all that appears.  There is always something behind the appearance, the sun behind the light playing on Midsummer Common, the water behind the River Cam, and the chef behind the menu and the food.  After the lunch at Midsummer House which should really just be called  experiencing taste, we went to visit the kitchen and in the furthest most modest kitchen was the chef owner beavering away at simple preparation of one of the evening's dishes.  The attention given to every aspect of preparation filtered right through all the staff.  Every waiter, chef, attendant clearly felt involved in delivering this experience.  I am struck by the magic of the creative process, the way things appear from nothing apparent through a process.  He, the owner chef, Daniel Clifford tells us how he suddenly, sometimes in the middle of the night, knows what new dish he is going to make and how he is compelled to get up and write it all down.  This putting into words is what happens and the same process is happening all the time but we seldom notice that it works like this.  We think we think things up but I am beginning to think that something happens through us, using our natures and talents and we are moved almost despite ourselves to enact or make or sing them.

Strawberry, elderflower delight

Lemon posset, berries and espuma

 Cambridge did the perfect performance for us, the weather, Kings College Singers sent their voices right up to the top of that great tall Chapel and beyond, a counter tenor's voice soaring above the bass, sharpening the boy soprano sound, candles lighting the darkened interior and all four of us full of the sheer enjoyment and bliss of a perfect end to a perfect day.

Saturday pleasures and meditation

It is going to be a perfect Saturday, bright and warm and early autumn, there are exceptionally nice guests staying and we are going to take them to Cambridge where the term will just be starting, all those bright young megabrains coming to dip into the knowledge which is is so palpable in Cambridge that I feel clever just going shopping there.  We will have lunch, go to the centre of the city and wander round finishing with choral evensong in Kings College, the first one of the season and presumably some of the singers will be new.
Beforehand coffee at the kitchen table, the newspapers and the unfolding of an old friendship, we have known this couple for 30 years, we would meet once a year through business and through the ordinary pleasantness of regular meeting, a real liking comes about which means we keep in contact.  Of course, we don't know each other's lives but there is such liking that hearing about their family and their life in Philadelphia adds depth to the sense of why we have always liked them.  We hope that they will like what we are going to show them, the Englishness of the Cambridge experience.
It was interesting to say that we were going to meditate at the start of the day, with people who you don't know so well, hiding a practice like this is much more common.  It is really a more important part of us than even family Saturday pleasures.

Meditation helps to free you from the rush forwards

Do you ever think that you won't ever catch up?  Well you won't be alone, it is nature driving YOU!  Every morning those hens come out and as if they are on a mission, they are totally driven by nature, no chance to do anything else but peck at the ground, eat, lay eggs and sleep exactly on time, no choice at all.  And the new chicken which is definately going to be a cockerel, is growing as quickly as watching a cartoon, every day a little more definition to him, a little less dependent on his mother.  And when you most think you haven't got time, you most have to make it to just stop, play time at his own game, don't be taken in by his speedy demands, he is just hand in hand with nature.  We sit to meditate and every muscle and sinew is suggesting that you should get up NOW and pick the beans, make that telephone call, get ready for the weekend, rush, rush, rush.  So, we stay and like the boy on the horse below, there is something totally still at the centre, totally present and not in a rush at all.

Meditation undoes wrong thinking

It is an early start, even the hens haven't got going and the light is just coming up through the mist.  There are things to be done before leaving for London, lots of things and it is a big temptation to put meditation at the bottom of the list.  Just a moment! aren't I blogging about a twice daily regular practice of meditation, meditation first, hens, dogs then only blog if you can.  It makes me realise how many things are the wrong way round, how many things I see with an eye to who I think I am, not with an eye on something a bit more real.  With the dawn of thinking more clearly, things take on their own reality, the flowers are just flowers, not something which suggests that I should water them, the hens are just chickening about, they aren't just another task and the blog is just a blog about meditation which I do after meditating and before zooming off up the road to the big city.