Eva Kor values

Eva Kors on why she hugged this man

Eva Kors interview (click on this) on Radio 4 last week after she had hugged Oscar Groning in the court where he is being tried for Nazi war crimes.  Listen to this before it leaves the BBC website. She speaks as the victim and survivor of Josef Mengele's experiments on twins at Auschwitz.  What is extraordinary about her is her rationale for forgiveness.  Forgiveness has set her free and many people can't understand that.  What forgiveness might do for the perpetrator isn't something she knows but forgiveness for her is an act of being free of hatred and the wish for revenge.  

I have retrieved the blog from the Butty dog especially to make certain that anyone who has any difficulty with forgiveness can read about why it works and to say that listening to her made sense of why I meditate.  The whole science of meditation is to set the mind free, to find the space where consciousness isn't clouded by thoughts or desires, good ones or bad.  I have found that not allowing the bad thoughts, literally banning them from my meditation works and hey, the good ones, I just say to them "wait and I'll think about you later".  The good ones are mostly obedient but the bad ones, the lurking feelings of justified or unjustified anger really do know that they're not allowed in if you address them forcefully.  I think they know that they have no place in the real you and that's what you are trying to realise each time you switch off from the character you seem to be and turn to the one you somewhere and somehow know that you are.  I expect that the Butty dog will be back, he enjoyed blogging too much to go back to just lying beside the computer.

Hypnotherapy suggested but meditation preferred

with friends

Me again, Butty the blogging dog!  In modern day parlance they suggest we "share our thoughts" so I am following the suggestion and sharing another suggestion.  Someone very dear to me, (hello Rachel) suggested that hypnotherapy might shift the way I think about food which isn't mine!  Hypnotherapy she thought might be just the ticket to make me into a dog without deviant behaviour.  To be honest I would rather have hypnotherapy than hydrotherapy, I hate getting into water and especially hate it when that old Granny sees how muddy I am and lifts me into the kitchen sink and shampoos me.  I wear my most woeful expression and when she finally lets me out after rinsing me off I shake as hard as I can and get as much wet round the room as I can.  

here I was, a puppy then

Anyway I deviate... but of course this is all about deviation and my particular deviousness in the thieving department.  So, I could go and sit with a hypnotist who would take me to a different realm of mind and then suggest that I should give up all thoughts of theft.   It costs to go to a hypnotist plus it doesn't always work and besides for that I like thieving and I don't really want to give it up.  That old Granny she knows about me and she says that daily meditation alongside her will gradually wash my dogginess out of me and I will quite possibly soar to transcendental heights where I won't be dog or frog or blogger and there will be no more baths and no more bother.  Sounds good to me.

See I told you so! I can manage technology

I told you so!

I know that you didn't really believe me when I told you that I could do the  blog but see here, no joking, it's me at the computer.  I believe that magazines from time to time have guest editors and that's what I am going to call myself, a guest editor until that Granny finds out what I am doing and puts a stop to it.

Whose a pretty boy now!

If you are wondering where she is I can tell you.  She and Grandpa are busy in the pond. He is cleaning it out with a net and she, god bless her, is rescuing tadpoles.  She thinks that all life is sacred, all are Spirit in different shapes and characters and that we (all creatures, dogs and all) become whatever we are and get to experience life as that very thing.  So, here I am, Spirit acting as a thieving lurcher and as that Granny says if that's true for me who knows who that tadpole might be!  It might have been a slippery character in another life and is now having to slip it's way through the bullrushes hoping not to get caught in Grandpa's net and be transported down to the river to take it's chance with the ducks.

Amazing meditating dog takes over blog!

Grandpa of the right, Granny in the middle and me on the right

That's me, the one on the right. The other two are MY grandparents or two of them (everyone has 4 grandparents but I only know 2 of mine).  The two old dears who look after me are getting themselves together for the morning, showering and fiddling about and I thought I would just climb up and write the blog for that Granny and tell you a few things about life as a meditating dog who appears in a meditating blog.

First, you should know that the Granny believes that I am first and foremost just Spirit.  That's what she says and she has a story to bear that out.  The story is about a Saint called Namadeva who had made himself a lovely supper of bread and butter near the cave where he lived.  Apparently Saints  like to be alone and don't eat much so this meal was something he probably looked forward to.  A dog, (a bit like me I think) came along and spotted the newly baked bread and he just obviously couldn't resist it and while the saint was quite possibly meditating or saying his grace before tucking in, he went along and took the bread right from under the Saint's eyes.  He, (if he was a bit like me) probably scarpered rapidly expecting to be chased and to have to give the bread back but he was surprised to see that the Saint wasn't at all angry.  That Saintly Namadeva just got up and fetched the pot of butter and went straight up to that thieving dog and said .....Lord,  you must not eat the bread without the butter....The Granny who is about to come down from her shower and find me here says that it was because Namadeva recognised the spirit in the dog and the very same as the Lord himself.  This is the sort of thing she likes to tell me and I listen hoping that the next bit of bread I get will be covered in butter (and jam).

The dog even looks like me!

Butty's story! Why I am an addict. The pressure of living with meditators

I just can't help it...and it's all their fault, the old grandparents I live with.  You see they just don't understand the pull of theft to a person like me.  They leave the bowl of sugar on the table after lunch, they leave the biscuits just just just within my reach and before I know myself, I have done the deed, climbed up on the table and delicately stretched myself forward and had them.  I don't mean to do it but the pressure of living with those two meditators who disappear to meditate, eyes closed and in another world, is too much for someone with my nature.  I was brought up with too many brothers and sisters, pulled from my natural home in a stable and brought to live in this home filled with delicious smells and from time to time there are chocolates.  If only I had undivided attention from the granny or even the grandpa and instead of being called bloody dog or wretched thief by one who I love, I might be able to overcome this wretched addiction to thieving things which don't rightfully belong to me.  They say that meditation will help me and I do join them as you will see from the photograph however when the half hour is over, the old habits return.  Any help to be had?

Grandpas on the terraces or not

this cat is a grandpa I'm sure

this Grandpa is not a hooligan

A report today said that there has been a recordable rise in hooliganism on the terraces all caused by Grandpas (their words not mine!).  Perhaps I wonder, Grandpas don't get out enough and have a whole lot of pent up energy waiting to be redirected.  Of course if these Grandpas meditated it might be different.  It seems a shame that now Grandpas have the chance of a longer life that they might spend it fighting other Grandpas who haven't been meditating.  Or maybe if a Grandpa has been found guilty of causing affray at footie matches he could be given compulsive calming and meditation which might do the trick.

It's all Greek to me

Have you noticed how the world of Ancient Greece is coming closer? In the Mighty Dead, Adam Nicolson's great question Does Homer Matter, is so compelling that you will be inspired to read those good old Homeric stories and to find out more. Ancient Greece is in the British Museum, there are television (BBC 4 Ancient Greek Art) and radio programmes (Woman's Hour) featuring the world of Gods and heroes, of the way that art and architecture make a real statement about the connection between the world of the Gods or the great powers and the world of men. When you see the frieze depicting the battle of the Gods and the Giants you see a battle which can never be won. The Giants just don't get the idea of anything beyond the physical world. The Gods need a human being, a human soul to come into the picture for there ever to be victory. We are like this now, never mind Ancient Greece. We are the ones caught between these great forces and we could learn a great deal by going back to the great stories of this particular past. Let's hear what this world can tell us about our souls today.

Battle between the Gods and the Giants, Delphi museum.

Absent friends aren't really absent

The whole idea of Easter is that nothing is what it seems, that's what our Jesus did, he fooled everyone.  He even fooled the disciples and he had been telling them that nothing is what it seems for three years, turning water into wine, pulling shoals of fishes out of the sea, walking on water and raising Lazurus from the dead.
They were, and so are we most of the time convinced that the thing we see is the real.  They thought that he had gone and that was that!!!  Years later He is everywhere, high streets, low streets, desert monasteries, this country, that country, art galleries and tourist shops, everywhere.  So, he meant us not to worry about his body or for that matter to worry about the bodies we can and can't see.  If you can't see the person you love, you don't need to think they aren't there and you can wish them well and well and well.

a hot debate!

Jump boys and girls jump

mother love!

As the debate rages between the party leaders, in Grandpa's house or rather in Grandpa's garden, the hot debate is which way the duck is going to take the ducklings she is hatching on the top of the garden wall?  This is a faithful couple, the duck and drake have been here before and this is her second brood of babies to hatch out on the top of a high level site.  He, the duck sleeps close by, head tucked under his wing, concerned like any father that his wife and children are going to make it in the next few weeks never mind the next parliament.  The first obstacle to the ducklings future is getting them down from that wall.  Last time they hatched up there, the duck pushed each baby off the top and they somehow bounced onto the grass underneath.  The second obstacle is negotiating the path through the garden minding the dogs and the large predatory birds who will spot those little brown and yellow bumble bee like babies as they follow Mum to the river.  The next obstacle will be life itself and that has it's own dangers as every Granny knows.

follow me and be quick about it!