Meditation not always easy but worthwhile. Examples help

www.justthisday.org

Ian Mason

When there is a lot going on in your house or in your head, meditation may be the last thing you WANT to do.  You may want to sort out the washing, the huge pile of ironing, you might be making a very important deal or there might be a most exciting thing you want to join in.  It is so difficult to leave a cheery gathering even if no-one is going to notice you slipping off for half an hour.  And then if you  start, your head stuff may want to come to.  If a problem slips in to your mind, it can be magnified a hundred times and played and replayed.  Of course, there are peaceful times when you easily leave things behind and meditation is a delight.  But it isn't there to always give delight, it is a bit like any relationship, you just have to work at it and when the worry or the enticing thought of holidays or wonderful creative possibilities comes in, you have to park them over and over again and make sure you are preferring the space where these things don't belong.  In fact, the effort is really in cooking them up but it seems the other way round, the effort to be still is a non effort, it is just a stopping, stopping, stopping, again and again and again.  Plus, it is only for 30 minutes twice a day, that leaves lots of time for everything else.

Lama Zangmo

Father Laurence Freeman

If I told you that your 30 minutes wasn't just making you better but was possibly creating a feeling for quiet for others to use when they needed it, when they were ill or were anxious or felt sad, wouldn't that be a spur to carry on?  

As a householder meditator with plenty to keep my hands and thoughts busy, I am grateful to people who give their life to creating the sort of space we all need through their meditation.  The speakers in November at ST Martin-in-the-Fields are marvellous in this respect.  Father Laurence Freeman, Neville Hodgkinson, Lama Gelongma Zangmo and Ian Mason have committed their lives and their time to make the way of meditation available to as many people as want it and even if you don't feel you do, or you don't feel you can, their meditation along with so many others who do the same thing, creates a good place for those in need.  Come to St Martin in the Fields or tune in via the live stream on November 23rd and find out how helpful this practice is and how it can transcend the pressing nature of worldly involvement

Neville Hodgkinson

An invitation for you and your friends

This is what you can do!!!
Print off the flyer below, put it in an envelope and send it to a friend.  Invite them to come round to you and join us in the glorious space which the internet offers and which will be full of good will streaming out of St Martin-in-the-Fields to you and which if you join it, will stream out to the world around.  Plus as well as being still, it will be so interesting to be virtually there and to hear the speakers who are a marvellous group of people.  If you would like me to send you some flyers or a poster and you are in the UK, do contact me via info@justthisday.org or go to the www.justthisday.org website contact page.  Please let me know if you are joining in.  Having an idea of how many people will be joining is so cheering and make every effort worthwhile.
Thanks to everyone for reading

This is the flyer

Introducing friends

Neville Hodgkinson

Lama Gelongma Zangmo

One of the best things about Just this Day is that people get to meet others who might have different ways of meditating and different ways of life but they get to see how marvellous one another is and how meditation unites them.  How does this happen you might ask.  Well it is because in meditation, you start to dissolve some of your views, some of your ideas and some of your attachments and when they dissolve or disappear for a bit, you see that because they do disappear and hopefully dissolve, they can't be the whole story.  They must be on top of a more fundamental identity and that one is the one shared by all of us.  

Ian Mason

www.smitf.org

So there are the methods and there are the places and there are the events.  There are the people who practice meditation and some of them wear white and some saffron and some maroon and some just wear any old thing.  But the clothes and the organisations are only there to show that there is someone or something inside and it is meditation which reveals that very special person who needs no covering at all.

www.justthisday.org

My friends who are coming to St Martin-in-the-Fields are representatives of their own groupings but they all believe that meditation belongs to none in particular and to anyone who practises faithfully.  There is a mark about them which is worth noting.  They all have winning smiles and I think that is because they feel happy and at one with themselves and with each other.  

Do come and meet them in November, either at St Martin-in-the-Fields or by turning on your computer and visiting our new website www.justthisday.org.  You can read about them all there and even more important, on November 23rd, you just click on the beautiful sparkling globe and bingo, you will be with us by live-stream.  Do please do this and make some good new friends.

Father Laurence Freeman OSB

Together in one space

The globe on the home page

 Dear All you readers of the blog,

Father Laurence Freeman

We are moving towards November 23rd and the central event of Just this Day in London.  I am hoping that you will join in wherever you are.  I hope that putting aside your own identity and joining many others in the single still space of meditation that our common effort will help the very divisive world we now live in.  It may sound airy fairy to say that meditation helps by spreading a feeling of unity but if you came into the summer house where we meditate or if you came near to it or near to a person who is meditating, you might notice that everything around that meditation participates in the sweetness of that stillness.  Even the dogs know exactly how long to stay absolutely still.  So, multiply that microcosm of stillness by pools of it round the world and a reservoir of it in the centre of London at St Martin-in-the-Fields where people with different backgrounds to their meditation join together and you might really believe in the powerful transcendent reality which is always there but often ignored.

Neville Hodgkinson

Ian Mason, will be chairing the event

Of course, if you live in Australia or New Zealand or if you are in New York or Trinidad, Singapore or Jakarta, your timings are different BUT with the miracle of YouTube you can join us at EXACTLY the same time.  Just go to www.justthisday.org and click on the beautiful sparkly globe which is on the home page on November 23rd and you will be straight there.  You can hear beautiful unaccompanied Bach playing us in, you can hear 5 different people, the vicar, Richard Carter from St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Benedictine Monk, Father Laurence Freeman OSB,  the philosopher and barrister, Ian Mason, the author and journalist, Neville Hodgkinson and the first female Lama to be appointed in the UK to Samye Dzong Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre, Lama Gelongma Zangmo.  They will all be speaking about the transcendent power of meditation.  You can check them all out beforehand by clicking on the names under the photographs.  

Lama Zangmo

If you can't join us while the day in London unfolds, you can listen and join in as soon as you can by going to You Tube or via the website.  And of course, I will be reminding you as the days go on.  I will also be telling you just why all these speakers are so very special and why I really hope that you will get to meet them and hear what they have to say.

So, what I hope you will do is to help me to spread the word about the day beforehand.

Everyday Transcendence

Wonderful paralympic team 2016

If I asked you if you had had a transcendent experience, you might doubt it, you might search for some out of body experience, some deep and profound shift from one consciousness to a state of sublime bliss and not find it there!
The subject of transcendence fascinates me because it seems such a far off and unlikely event in the ordinary way of things.  However, if you look at it in a different way (and especially look at it after the end of those wonderful Paralympic Games) you might get a hint of the possibility of everyday transcendence.  Because if transcendence means to transcend one state of being for another, then surely a person who might think they were disabled but who decides to transcend the condition by taking part in an exacting sport is someone who has transcended the state of disability and risen to the state of athlete.

lovely glass of wine!

In the same way, a person with a headache who goes to work has transcended the state of headache, not accepted the headache as a reason not to go in.  They have transcended state one for state two.  My own state of transcendence is to complete half an hour of meditation and transcend the ideas which beg for attention some of which are completely brilliant and would let me rebuild the house and probably remodel the universe!!! Some of them are the opposite, those ideas tell me what rubbish I am, what a failure and why would anyone like me!  Transcending the second lot is clearly desirable, transcending the great and glorious ones takes a bit more effort.
You have to make sure that the lovely supper or the glass of wine aren't going to win the day because     somewhere deep in your consciousness, you know that they are a passing thing and you are trying to build up a capital of remembering the transcendent reality of your own soul. You have to have the discipline of an athlete, an everyday build up of strength to be able to transcend the idea that you are just a body with a small mind inside it bound to your name and your nationality, your status and your age.  It has to be worth it doesn't it. Plus you can have the glass of wine when you have finished especially if you haven't let it cross your mind during your meditation!

The real Titchener tale at Granny's house

Before the end, it all seemed perfect

A hot debate between Grandpas

Are you gripped by the current Archers story of domestic abuse?  I am addicted to it and have to creep off at 7.00 pm to listen by myself because there is a debate in our house about what the real issue is.  I am all for Helen but Grandpa thinks that it is a feminist plot and that someone should write a script with an abusive female.  Maybe Clary  Grundy abusing Ed, and never allowing him to go to the pub or to see his mates or his old Dad! Or maybe Linda Snell terrorising Robert and excluding his family!
You may be wanting to know what happened to our own feathered Rob Titchener, he of the Buff-Orpington family who cruelly dispatched his Helen by constant hidden bullying.  We kept him in isolation for a while but watched over by the flock of hens, all female, who had witnessed the terrible bullying of Helen and were just waiting for their chance to see justice being done.  Actually, it wasn't justice, it was revenge and he, a lone male, possibly repentant and alone, was set on by the whole other 10 hens and found by one of us, dead as dead.  This may possibly indicate that Grandpa has a point and although Rob Titchener is clearly a bad man, the feminine creature is also pretty fearsome when she thinks she is right.  All that being said, I hope that Helen is out of that prison by the end of tomorrow's marathon listen and I hope that Grandpa doesn't come in and disturb me while I listen, gripped,  as if it were really happening.

Multi-purpose Granny app

Grandchildren

Clearly being a Granny is only a small part of who anyone might be,  In fact, Granniedom is only real when you are thinking of, being with, preparing for or considering the welfare of those who come into your own particular Granniedom.  So, this has been an interesting summer for us to watch the size of the Granniedom.

What is it is that sets a grandparent in motion.  What I have noticed, especially as some of the grandchildren live abroad and the others are far away is that when they are expected, Grandpa gets the croquet out, the tractor comes out of the shed, he goes down to his cellar and brings up special drinks for the parents of the grandchildren and he and I set about making family favourite foods: prawn cocktail, fish pie and steak and kidney pudding (not my bag!).  They come, they go, it all rushes by with friends and festivities and we change gear.

Dogs

Grandchildren's shoes

But of course, it doesn't end there, there is the Skype connector, the WhatsApp Group, the plans to visit again all set against a backdrop of something else.  I am going to tell you what it is just in case you far away grandchild are out there listening.  It is set against a background of love, not sloppy sentimental love, but deep profound and continuous love.  Apart from anything else about it, it isn't our love, we just get to participate in it as grandparents but also as dog owners, gardeners, Olympic gymnasts, Aid workers, brides and grooms, mothers and fathers, lovers, young and old, we all just get a dollop of love from a great big bowl of love.  This love isn't pink or blue or coloured in anyway, it simply is what exists.

When you get a chance to be quiet and still and you tune in to that love especially if you need it or you have someone in your life who you are concerned about, you know it is real.  When you turn away from it, it doesn't ever turn away from you.  Apart from anything else, it can't.  It is all there is.  So, when I don't see you dear children and grandchildren, I can leave my particular individual Granny and Grandpadom and all its pairing of socks and preparing of meals and meet it in meditation.  It is a discipline to do this twice a day every day and of course sometimes the socks take precedence. During this summer when there have been an unusual number of dramatic moments and people (and the Butty dog) to really care for, meditating has been for real and the reality of unmoving love surrounding all of us is really and truly there.

One who knows