Just now (as in earlier today) I had some perfectly natural, normal, and expected thoughts about my prayer life. If I’m to be honest though, and perhaps a tad overly tough on myself, the thoughts I had felt slightly ridiculous given my professed commitment to praying constantly, and my supposed understanding of the meaning and function of prayer. In other words, there I was again: putting some kind of unrealistic expectations on myself – again!
Anyway, enough of that. To sum up those thoughts: I was thinking they – my prayers – aren’t working. Nothing is happening. And I was asking myself questions: What’s been achieved? What’s coming from all the effort? Where are the results?
And then, exactly at the moment I was writing down those thoughts and questions, I lifted my eyes from my notebook to see my partner-hermit approaching.
‘It’s my blessing at the moment,’ she said walking by my chair.
Why did she say that?
Because, right there before my eyes was evidence that none of my ridiculous thoughts and questions on my prayer life, had any meaning whatsoever. There was the answer, walking past me.
Today’s post opens with what I think is called an oxymoron (funny word that)
No need to repeat here that I am a hermit; there you go, I repeated it, but it’s true nonetheless: I am a hermit. The oxymoron bit comes in when I make another obvious statement to the effect of, as a hermit I very much prefer to spend the vast majority of my time right here where I am right now: in our hermitage.
This has become even more the case since our community decided to ‘settle down’ for a while in the one spot.
Obviously, just like everyone else, we have shopping and other chores that need to be done. Then there’s the occasional visit to the Doctor, and even the dreaded dentist, that will call me away from my safe-haven.
And that’s even before I mention walking for fresh air, exercise, and simple enjoyment. Or pursuing my Contemplative Photography practise. Both activities take me out and about, but usually not too far or for too long, from the Hermitage.
In any case, both these welcome (and absolutely necessary) pastimes have me mostly on my own, being quiet with heart, mind, and eyes open, or simply contemplating ‘stuff’.
No, it’s nore the occasions when I’m having to interact with people, or when there are crowds. Some might call me over-sensitive, but that label would only apply on my outgoing and gregarious days.
While that was intended as a little ironic humour, I must insist (internal editor speaking here) that I add that oftentimes said outgoingness and gregarious demeanor is an act, a cover for anxiety, and usually ends up making me feel worse anyway.
Although I guess you could also say that I’m allergic to the world and its ways, there are the occasional times when I want to, not so much ‘be around people’, as feeling the need to be somewhere where some life is going on around me. Not hectic life, as I’ve said, more like people going quietly about their business, doggies walking and playing with their humans, maybe people sitting chatting to friends. I guess you know the kind of thing.
This Mystic Tree stands for all the Tree People
The hermit gods blessed us in placing us in a hermitage which we love more and more, literally five minutes walk to a low-key, friendly indoor/outdoor café overlooking the village green with it’s big tree in the middle, and its nice lawns where the above-mentioned not so hectic life with it’s chatting, sitting, and relaxing people, and its doggies leading their humans in games and walks goes on. The coffee is okay too.
Except. People can be friendly, which in itself ,of course, is a lovely lovely thing, but as I’ve been telling you, I’m not really very good with people in those kinds of situations. Keep a low profile, is my ongoing advice to me.
The poem I share today was composed as I sat in the sun on a recent visit to that coffee shop. This visit prompted me to try to describe something – in poetic form and in ‘real time’ – of what I’ve been sharing with you here. No, what it actually describes is my strategy on that occasion for keeping said low profile.
This poem also holds a timely reminder that arrived with, what I can only think of as divinely inspired timing.
SOUNDS AND VIBRATIONS
My eyes are cast down – not downcast. The brim of my hat pulled low. As good, I hope, as a Do Not Disturb sign.
For a hermit, out of his cell, the cell must be reconstructed. He is his cell. Eyes focused on these words revealed; hat brim, the walls.
I never forget, but just in case!
A chime resounds, but it does not disturb, for I know for what it tolls: Chant Hare Krishna, it calls to me. So, these words must conclude; words of praise now commence.
Surrender is a key issue for our community of Hermits. Surrender in the sense of, to put it really simply, how to just go with the flow; how to recognise that the universe moves as it does, and how might we fully realise that while we do what we can, playing our part, in the final analysis, life unfolds as it does.
Like I guess, most people we often have trouble accepting the so-called realities of life like bodily changes, world events that sadden, shock or outrage us. You know what I’m talking about. We just like stuff to work out just as we would prefer, and when it doesn’t? Well that’s when we suffer; we get angry, frustrated or sad or otherwise affected emotionally and even physically. Again you know what I mean.
Courtesy of our resident artist
‘The will of God’ or ‘the will of the Universe’ are common recommendations for surrendering to. But of course ‘God’ or the ‘Universe’ have no will of their own; it simply is what it is, and follows the laws of nature, the natural order of life the Universe and everything as has been famously said time and again.
So, a small poetic offering on just that theme of surrender. This time asking: surrender to whom or to what? The answer I come up with is perhaps not as far out as it might first appear when you read it. Maybe we’ll do a post looking more deeply at that one.
Anyway, please accept my small offering.
WE SHALL SURRENDER UNTO WHOM?
To whom, or to what shall we surrender? We are hermits; we dwell in a hermitage. Here are our cells, our Paradise. A walled enclosure unto which we may surrender.
I feel like talking more … Sorry. Start again. It’s not what it seems and, well rather than get into it now, just read on a bit and all shall become clear.
Anyway, there’s an old joke that goes like this: One friend says to another friend: ‘How come you’re always talking to yourself?’ To which the second friend replies: ‘Well, you see, I always like to talk to the most intelligent person in the room, so I look around and usually I find that it’s me. So I end up talking to myself’.
Okay, maybe not so funny. Could be taken as bad manners or rude come to think of it. But that’s how jokes often are isn’t it?
Anyway, and here we get to the little bit of clarity I promised, you’re probably going to remind me that I have often said I would like to talk less, and be quiet more often.
That’s still true, but this is different. You see, lately I’ve been feeling the need to talk more about various aspects of my ‘inner life’. You know the sort of thing: confusions and worries; niggling issues bugging me; that kind of stuff.
And my community hear and experience quite enough of my inner life, with its contradictions, mood swings, and the rest; I have no intention of being more of a burdon than I probably already am.
So, I look around and ask who’s left? Me! Myself! I! Not exactly the most intelligent person in the room, so there the joke breaks down, but it does indeed look like I might end up talking to myself after all.
Well, it’s kind of a yes and no sort of thing. ‘Myself’ is the individual with this mind and body, making these words appear on the screen. It’s the ego self, the me that’s the being who walks, talks, breathes, and … Well you know what else.
But, and this is the brilliant bit, if I separate the words to read My Self, will it’s a whole other story. For a start, Self is not ‘mine’. Self is that part of me that is consciousness; and it’s not a different entity than ‘your’ consciousness, or anyone or anything else’s.
So, if I start talking to this Self that’s actually anyone and everyone, and not just me, who is it that I am in fact talking to?
Sounds to me like I’d be talking to you, and you, and everyone else; to the trees, the birds; everybody!
And yes, that’s exactly right. For me, there is only Self – consciousness – that is indeed anyone, anything, everyone, and everything in the Universe, both seen and unseen.
In other words, I’d be talking to God; the Divine; the Absolute Reality; the Thou Art That described by at least one of the world’s great spiritual traditions.
Which is to say, I want – need – to spend some more time talking to, and in conversation with, God.
Phew. I’m glad I figured that out.
You might remember the prayer I wrote a while ago to the Divine Mother? Seems like a good place to share it with you again.
It was way back in the earlier days of this blog, sometime in 2022, that I wrote a post about our community’s liking for snacking on plain toast by choice. It’s our more or less regular late evening, before bed, bite to eat. Perhaps accompanied by black tea, as I described in that post.
As I also point out in that post, I do actually enjoy plain toast. It’s not that I no longer like jam or other yummy spreads; I like them too well truth be told, but sometimes, well, plain is good.
As the day winds down to become night, and we settle to our evening snack, I will sometimes make a joke about simple food, or monks with simple tastes, whatever. Anyway, a few nights ago I made a remark, a joke, that has had a profound impact on me.
‘I’ll just say a prayer for my two slices of dry toast.’
Of course I am just like so many other religious or spiritually inclined people, and say a prayer before I receive any and all food or drink. It’s a long time habit, and a blessing I like to perform. Just a thank you is all it is really.
This comment, this joke, as soon as it was out of my mouth, I realised, of course I will. Don’t I always?
It’s true that our community lives simply, as simply as we can. And that includes what we eat and drink. It’s also true that this is not some sort of ethical stance consciously taken; nor is it a kind of overlaid act of solidarity with those who have no choices due to poverty or other circumstances.
It’s purely and simple because we like simple. It really does suit our natures and temperaments and for us it is the obvious way to live.
It is no renunciation: we welcome simple. This obviously is not to say that we are unaware that our very natures and temperaments naturally steer us away from choices that are unethical or are out of sync with compassion (call it solidarity) for other beings.
The reason I’m ranting on about this off-hand comment thrown out as a so-called joke is, well just that: It was off-hand, and my misguided intention in making this ‘joke’ was insensitive and careless; it was lacking compassion for all the other living beings sharing life and consciousness with me.
And for that flippancy and carelessness, I ask forgiveness from the invisible community that is in fact all of us struggling to live in a material world.
My sense is that in saying ‘all of us’ I might instead say, all of us who are in truth One; We who are that one Self that seeks forgiveness.
Occasionally, on this blog, I have had the good fortune to be able to share with you a poem I have written.
I say occasionally because, at best, I am an occasional poet – or rather than take on that label, it’s better to say that sometimes words in some kind of poetic form emerge.
From time to time said poetic emergences could be called devotional. Devotional in the sense that my words seek to express praise, recognition, gratitude or similar sentiments, ideas, thoughts, and so on, directed towards those things I regard as sacred.
That might be ‘God’ in the direct sense that we all would understand right away, or it might be the divine as manifested through objects, people, or other beings in the material or non-material world.
Actually, come to think of it now as I make these notes, I realise that according to that not so short definition, most if not all my poetry has been devotional for quite some time now. Yes. I think that’s right.
Anyway, to get this post moving along a bit. A few days ago, I mentioned to my community, ‘I’ like to write devotional poetry.’
‘You do already,’ was the unanimous response. To which I replied, ‘I suppose so, but I want to sing praises.’
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
And that, my friends, became the title of a poetic effort from me expressing just that exact prayer.
Now I share with you those words that were given me as I ‘just sat’ in our temple.
I WANT TO SING PRAISES
Devotional poetry. That’s what I want to compose. Actually, is there a calling to such composition? Yes, for I do hear the call; it resonates deeply. But, my ego-mind, it’s not listening. Anyway, composing poetry devotional is of the heart; It leaves the mind behind. Looks like one more ‘make the mind your friend’ moment. Praise be all that is.
A curious title for a post, I thought as the words popped into mind. And it’s one that could be hinting at, pointing towards, any number of ideas, topics, or whatever.
In this case, however, it is really quite straightforward: The title refers to a three-line quote I rediscovered when I was transferring notes from a full notebook to a new one the other day.
Actually, ‘three-line’ quote may not be quite correct. In fact, I have no idea if it is a longer quote consisting of three lines, or, three individual one-liners that I happen to have grouped together.
Whatever the case, I don’t know where I found this quote or these quotes. All I can say is that I was surprised to come across them as I performed the normally routine task of transferring notes.
Surprised, because each of these lines I think, hold a special message for me; a unique piece of advice. You could even call them guidance.
Each individual line and its message is wrapped around and driven by the verb to keep:
Keep your spirits up Please help keep the silence. God’s will be done and keep calm.
As a whole, this quote (these quotes) constitute a kind of ‘how to live in the world’ mini-guide. Each – and all – of the three lines point to an aspect of what we might call Right Living – guiding us to the means by which we may approach daily life with its ups and downs, its sorrows and joys, good and bad times, mistakes, hurts, confusion, that make up our lives as flawed human beings living the best we can in an imperfect world.
Keep your spirits up
What with all those ups and downs, sorrows, daily crises – in our own lives and in the world around us – how are we to keep our spirits up?
How do we free ourselves of the pain and suffering caused to us by all these travails?
How do we remain positive and optimistic in the face of what passes for a life ‘in the world’?
All good questions, and there are many many answers out there in that same crazy, mixed-up world that’s giving us all the trouble in the first place.
Speaking only for me, I have nowhere near reached the point where I can say that my spirits are consistently lifted, that I let nothing disturb me.
Why is that? The answer is simple: because I’m a human being. Or perhaps it’s better to say I inhabit a human body which is subject to one thing only: constant change.
I’m learning more and more that the only one I can address such questions to is me. If there are any answers to how to keep my spirits up, I’m realizing slowly that I won’t find them out there in the world or in the things of the world.
So, going within has to be at least my tentative response. It seems that there really is nothing else that will keep my spirits up for more than some fleeting often illusory moments here and there.
Please help keep the silence
What silence? Well may you ask: hardly what you’d call a quiet place to live, this world of ours.
Once again, for me, going within is a good start. Though I’m not the quietest person in the world, especially ‘within’. Too many thoughts, emotions coming and going, all the craziness of an overactive mind and heart.
But it’s a start.
I keep re-centring when I can. I focus on my breath; recite some favourite prayers; chant mantra (the names of God); I sometimes just sit. All these do help me, will help me, I know. They do, sometimes, every now and again, for little moments, create that little (vast?) space I call silence.
As to playing my part in keeping that broader, silence? Well I’ve mentioned before the invisible community – the heaps of people all over the world who are on the same or similar paths, practising their own unique ways of going within, of cultivating both inner and external quiet, or silence.
All of which tells me, I am not alone. And it says, my little contribution to silence – to being still and quiet – actually counts.
God’s will be done and keep calm
For me, ‘God’s will be done’ is simply another way of saying that the Universe (or life) is unfolding exactly as it does in the only way it can. It just is as it is. And me, being also that life, I play my part.
And that’s all: we play our part; we do our bit, and it all happens as it does.
Acceptance of this truth is also one of those aspiration things I keep near the top of my list. Surrender, I sometimes call it. Surrender, rather than being a ‘giving up’ as we sometimes use the word, is more about going with the flow of the river, or accepting and cooperating with the flow of the natural order of the Universe as we experience it in our lives.
That ‘keep calm’ bit reminds me of that meme that was everywhere a few years ago: ‘Keep calm and carry on’. It, in a real sense, is exactly what I’m trying to do.
Surrendering, or accepting that ‘the universe is unfolding as it should’ (to borrow once again from the astonishing Desiderata) seems to be the clearest most obvious way to that calm our quote speaks about: Calm acceptance, free from the resistance and struggle against the flow of the river of life that lies at the root of much of our suffering.
So, the Dharma of Keeping. One small (or perhaps not so small) set of clues about how to live right in the world – and with the world.
The river of life is calling me to the kitchen. Even hermit monks have dishes to put away. So, keeping calm, I carry on.
Hermitage on the Loch (courtesy: a member of our community
You know, for all my prayers; for all my mental discipline – efforts at mental discipline – for all my meditations, chanting, and other practices, I still just talk way too much for my liking, and often it feels like it’s only talking for the sake of talking.
I still just open my mouth and let come out any old thing that keeps the noise going. Oh, it’s worse than that: sometimes when I talk it’s rambling and waffling that I cleverly (or not so cleverly) disguise as intelligent, rational, and based logically on knowledge that I either have or haven’t got. Either way, I somehow seem to think I’m offering words of well thought out wisdom.
Whereas, as I said, the noise I make is so often rambling, contradictory , ill-informed, thoughtless waffle.
Enough! Blimey, that’s enough. Talk about opening a post on a calm, relaxed, optimistic, and compassionate note.
Here’s the thing: I want to devote my entire life to devotion and prayer. And that requires at least some silence. Yet, instead, I merely talk about the joys of silence, about the joys of full-on devotion to the divine, and as well I occupy so much time and energy to just voicing random thoughts that come and go, go and come, without rhyme, without reason.
Okay, here’s the second thing: I long with my deepest longing to be silent – to not simply stop talking, though that would be an excellent beginning. No, I want to be quiet; I want my vocal chords to have a break and let my true voice speak through my life, through this blog, my photographs and in whatever way I am lead.
So, what to do? Well, here’s the third thing, thing number three: all I need to do in order to both stop talking so much and be silent is to just sit. Sit and do nothing. There is no thing that I can do that will magically turn me into an oasis of silence and peaceful calm.
Sometime in the dim distant path I read someone paraphrasing The fouth Noble Truth in two words, Just sit. Buddha did indeed know what he was talking about. And I do get the irony: when I talk, I need to say something that helps, not just make noise and try to avoid silence.
Earlier today I took my camera out for a walk. Which is to say, I had an intention that the walk would be more than exercise for the body (very much needed as it is), but also an opportunity for my eyes and heart to open up a little to the tiny part of the world I was to pass through.
I also hoped that my mind would join in so that I would be able to actually recognise what I was seeing and feeling, allowing me to perhaps make images of what I saw and felt.
One final prayer: In doing its job, I hoped my mind would stay focused, and work behind the scenes very quietly.
A few minutes walk from the Hermitage is the shore of a fairly large lake, and when I reached that spot, I sat on a conveniently placed little wall, so I could, well, just sit for a bit.
By chance, um. Sorry, let me rephrase that. By the brilliant synchronicity that results from the perfect working out of the natural laws of the Universe, right in front of me, nearer to the water’s edge, a dozen or more Corellas played and foraged. At least to my limited human eyes, that’s what they were doing.
Zoom in and share the fun!!
It’s mesmerizing watching them: tumbling with each other or on their own; picking up and wrestling with twigs and other small things. I was blessed too, to witness several of these creatures taking off, in flight, and landing.
You might have heard me say (or read when I wrote) that ‘I was just not there’. Well, not today; today I was definitely there. In a contemplative reverie in which I felt connected with what I was witnessing through my lens.
‘I had a small sense of being relaxed,’ I commented casually to my community when I arrived back at the Hermitage. And that’s what it felt like: I had relaxed for a time. I can’t say I was aware of the passage of time; it was more an eternal being in the moment if I was to try to label it now. It might have been thirty minutes or ten by the world’s measure; I have no idea really.
I’m only ever going to be a beginner when it comes to paying full attention, to contemplating and being completely immersed in the moment, and not forgetting trying to control the monkey mind. Practise will never make perfect in that department!
Anyway that’s why spiritual practices are called practices: they require the spiritual seeker to be committed to a life of ongoing and continual practise.
Of course encountering those birds at the lake today is definitely a practice I would be happy to practise anytime!
Do they really? Who needs to be more kind? How would I know? I mean, I could say, but I won’t – I can’t. It’s not my place, or my right to judge what someone else needs to do or not do. I find it hard enough to look at my own behaviours and to tell myself what I need to do or stop doing. Actually, I sense a question coming on, but I think we’ll leave it for another day.
Anyway, let me share with you an act of kindness of which the Hermitage community was this morning on the receiving end of.
On looking out the front door we discovered that our bins had been brought in. Monday morning is the weekly garbage collection time in our neighbourhood, which means later day Mondays are the times for the bringing the bins in ritual.
But today, no ritual for us: our bins were brought in by … well we don’t know who. It might have been a neighbour, or it might have been a random passerby.
In any case, whoever performed this not so small act of kindness lifted the spirits of our community members. In other words, it made us feel good.
So, perhaps I can’t judge whether or not other humans need to be more kind, but I can tell you how it feels to be on the receiving end of such kindnesses: nice.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 