Recently I came across some notes I’d made about a book I read ages ago, at least a year I think. Anyway, the name of the book: The Art of Mindful Walking. Sorry, but no prizes for guessing what it’s about.
Reading my notes I see that I had been particularly taken with what the author had to say about ‘our place in the Universe’. He reflects on our – humanity’s that is – perception of our size in the big scheme of things.
The author recounts how we once went for a walk with American astronaut Dave Scott, who’d been to the moon on one of the Apollo missions. Scott described to him what it felt like looking back at Earth from the surface of the moon:
It hangs in the black sky like a glass bauble, a blue and white Christmas decoration. It’s a small, fragile world.
Ford then goes on to reflect that this image, of a small, fragile ball floating in space, has ‘become a part of the modern psyche’. Then he says:
We begin to see how vulnerable we actually are. We are the first generation truly to see this. We are also the generation that is coming closest to polluting and destroying it.
I don’t think I’d quite looked at it in this way before. And I admit, it stunned me a bit.
Just think: Of all the humans who have ever lived, those alive in the last 50 or 60 years have been the first to see our home planet in its entirety. At least we’ve had the good fortune of seeing images of Earth just as those astronauts saw it. Thanks to those images made from space, we now have had a glimpse of where we actually live and the nature of our world.
Yet, at precisely this point in our history as a species, when we have that particular knowledge, this is the time we seem to be almost wilfully destroying the very ground we walk upon, the air that keeps us living, and the water without which there is no life.
I’m not a warrior. I am a hermit and a pilgrim and I try hard to not make judgements. As such, I can only look on in wonder.
And I can pray.
Thanks to Jimmy Buffett for the title. It’s a line from one of his greatest songs, called Defying Gravity. Thanks Jimmy for all the music man.
Sloth. Its a good word isn’t it? One of those words you don’t have to look up to know what it means. But if you do look it up, you’ll find it has a couple of meanings. One is: laziness, indolence and a reluctance to make an effort.
Is sloth a bad thing? Certainly it gets a bad rap; I mean: lazy? Indolent? Not willing to make an effort? Hardly words of praise. On the other hand we value words like busy, productive, efficient, hard working, and the rest. In our culture, these are definitely words of praise.
Go out and play; Read a book; Go to school; Study hard; Get a good job (whatever that means); How much do you make a year? When are up for promotion? Demands and questions like these are constants in all our lives, and they force us into defining ourselves by what we do whether we are a little kid at school, a teenager trying to sort life out, an adult trying to make our way in the world the best we can.
Yes, it’s true I think: it always seems to be a about defining ourselves by what we do, rather than who we are, or what we stand for. Always we have to be doing something. Ever heard that little identity joke, I’m a human being, not a human doing? I wonder how many of us would feel lost if we shifted from that need to be a doer to another definition of our identity, one less reliant on what we do or on what we’ve done in the past, or will do in the future.
Well, I hear you saying, this is all fine and dandy, but my boss won’t pay me unless I show up, there are meals to cook for the kids, I’m running late for an appointment, the lawn needs mowing and after that I have to write a report for my night class.
All very true, valid, and all of them things that do need to be done. We all have a life don’t we? But perhaps sometimes, even just now and again, and perhaps just for a few minutes at a time, you can stop. Just stop. Thats all. Stop and just do nothing, or rather stop and simply be.
Have I mentioned a favourite little two word sentence I really really like? Just sit. Don’t read, don’t think, don’t try to stop thinking, don’t ‘meditate’. All that’s required is to do nothing. Do No Thing. Actually, I think I’ve found a new favourite.
On, remember I said there are a couple of definitions of sloth? Well the other one tells us that a sloth is a slow moving nocturnal mammal noted for hanging upside down from tree branches. It lives entirely in the trees and is capable of only very slow movement on the ground.
So, I guess you should be very careful when you tell someone else I’m a sloth. Mind you, putting aside the hanging upside down bit, and the nocturnal requirement, it’s probably not such a bad way of being to emulate, do you think?
Over the last couple of months or so I’ve been listening on and off to Jimmy Buffett. I like Jimmy’s music, and I have liked it since the late 70s. I have at least ten of his albums in my Music folder.
Anyway, Buffett is an American singer/songwriter who writes and performs songs about beach life, sailing, exotic island paradises, and generally having a good time down at the beach and in and on the water. And preferably in sunny climes.
Yes. Hedonistic is a word that’s been used to describe his music and the lifestyle he celebrates. Still, I’ve liked him for a very long while now, and every so often I get into his ‘escapism’ and his relaxing in paradise kind of vibe.
Something a little rebellious about many of his lyrics too. But let’s not go there just now. What I want to talk about is a song I’ve listened to dozens of times, but when I played it again the other night, it got my attention in a way it never had before.
What I mean to say, is that for the first time I actually heard the song (Love the Now. Have a listen, you won’t regret it). I got what the writer was saying with his lyrics.
All the pain and the pleasure I love the now All the blood and the treasure
Then another verse:
The whole damn world’s gone crazy The moon is jumping over the cow How can you help But not love the now?
It’s like he’s saying, ‘yeah, it’s all good.’ Not just hedonistic but nihilistic as well. Like he doesn’t care, doesn’t want to know. But, then, in another verse he writes:
It’s the only place I’ve ever been It’s the only way that I know how
It is. That’s what he’s saying. ‘All the ranting and Ravin’ and ‘All the cussin’ and cravin’‘ are there for sure. Or, rather, they are all here. And now. But, dig a little deeper, read between the lines (so to speak).
Listen to this:
Don’t talk about your superstitions Don’t talk about your cats meow But don’t talk about tomorrow tonight I Love The Now
You see? He doesn’t want to hear about your belief systems imposed on you by others. He doesn’t want to hear about your fears that have been manufactured by someone else to keep you in line. And he is not the slightest bit interested in your fancy material toys and other stuff (cat’s meow: a great expression coined in the 1920s meaning fancy, flashy, cool, awesome and other similar epiphets).
And don’t talk about some far off distant future (okay tomorrow night may sometimes seem awfully close to now, but you get the meaning).
The bottom line (literally and figuratively): he loves the now. And that’s because that’s all there is: the now.
So, on the face of it hedonistic, nihilistic even, as if he’s shrugging his shoulders in a ‘so what?’ kind of way. But he’s not doing that at all; he’s actually offering a solution to the overwhelming tidal wave of ‘things that are wrong with the world’, and about which many of us feel helpless and sometimes even hopeless. The Now. It really is the only thing you’ve ever known, the only time and place you can ever hope to be. So why not love it? Why not just live it?
This is not resignation; it is not fatalism or a giving up (or in). In fact it is a courageous engagement with the total reality of life as it is right now. Jimmy writes that:
Tomorrow’s right around the corner I’ll get there somehow But I’m stuck in [the] meantime
A couple of days ago when this powerful and important statement in the form of this illustration showed up on my social media, I was struck by something I don’t think I’d noticed before. Suddenly I saw: ‘might not change the world”. Might not? Which gave me the idea: it could as easily say ‘Helping one person might change the world …’.
But, you know, my thinking went even further: I realized that might and might not have nothing to do with it. The reality is that every action we take, and that includes the action of helping other living beings, actually does change the world.
Well, firstly, which of our actions help other beings, and thus change the world, we can’t always know. And obviously we can’t always (actually it’s more like very rarely) see the impacts of our actions. And even if we do, it’s likely that we’ll only directly get to see what happens in a limited and local sense. Nevertheless, all actions have a tendency to result in a domino, or cascade effect that literally never stops.
But, wait, there’s more. I kept thinking about it, and came up with a couple of ideas about why it could be a good idea to change the might not in this marvelous saying, which speaks of a negative possibility, to always will, which points to something definite.
All is one on the physical and the non-physical levels
We’ve all had those moments when we sense a connection with the rest of the world; we feel that we are part of nature, part of something bigger than just the one of us.
But, have you ever felt you were even more than just a ‘part of’ the world or nature? Have you ever had a sense that you are nature? Maybe this sounds a bit esoteric: we are one Self; we are all manifestations of the divine; we are all sparks of the one light, and so on.
And of course we can’t know for sure what goes on beyond the physical world. But, even at the most basic level of the material world, especially as we get down to the microscopic and even atomic levels, it’s hard to see any ‘separation’ between any individual and another. Atoms merge and cross over, interact, and change, energy fields collide and mingle, between all living and non-living things.
So, who’s to say that one small action on my part, one small change, won’t have a cascading effect as the ripples (that’s a good way to put it isn’t it?) from that action spread through the world and beyond?
The ‘What can One Person Do?’ Dilemma
Our Sydney Smith quote partially answers this agonising question for us as we’ve seen. Still, you might think that one person can’t do a lot when the needs are so many and so vast, and when most problems in our world seem to be so intractable. Mr Smith says that there is always something you as one person, as an individual can do, even if it’s a small thing you do.
Just think how many people everywhere are asking this same question: ‘What can one person do?’ If even a tiny percentage of those individuals answered that they could do something, then you would start to see changes taking place for sure. How could all those actions not add up to a changed world?
The Multiplyer Effect
Just now I used the words ‘add up’. Well actually it’s more like a multiplication effect isn’t it? If we say we change the world by helping just one person, then there has to be a Multiplyer at work I think.
We have all heard that aphorism that if you give food to a hungry person then you feed them for a day, but if you teach that person to produce their own food, then you feed them for a lifetime. Another truism definitely.
Still, once again, I think we can go further. Is it possible that by teaching one person to produce their own food you can help the whole world eat properly? Let me tell you a story I heard on an online video just a few days ago.
A man was traveling in a poor part of a country he loved. He’d spent the previous few years in another part of the same country building a house and growing his own vegetables and fruits.
He met a local person who was renting a small block of land, and that person asked him if he could help them build a house and teach them to grow their own food. It was a poor area, and the land was pretty much a little slice of jungle.
Anyway, this man agreed to help, and has been there for a few years now. He showed that local person how to grow various fruits and what looked to me to be a huge variety of vegetables. And they didn’t forget the flowers either. As the seasons passed, seeds were gathered and more land turned over to growing food.
Apparently from the very start they had a surplus of the fruits and vegetables they were growing, so they began offering them to neighbours, most of whom were also very poor.
Our traveling friend then showed them how to collect seeds from the food they ate (and the flowers too) and began to show these neighbours how to plant, fertilise, care for, and harvest what those seeds produced. In this way they too were able expand the amount of food they could grow.
So, already there is a growing area of this one slice of one country, that’s becoming self sufficient in fruit and vegetables. Now, that’s not the whole world obviously, but you’d have to agree, it’s a good start.
Anyway, just think: those people now have skills and surplus food and seeds to share further afield. Who can say how far such action might spread? It all sounds quite simplistic put like this, but it is the way that many grassroots movements for change have worked. And remember, nobody can reliably predict the ongoing impacts of any actions.
So, yes it is true, helping one person does indeed change the world for that one person. But whatever we do for one person, it also does definitely change the world beyond. As we’ve said, we may not see how or that it changes everything in the world and certainly not all at once.
We may think of ourselves as just one separate little individual, but we are united with all life. We may think that it’s all too much; too many problems; what can I do? The road to changing the world seems to be blocked, seems to be impassable.
Well, one teacher I admire is Swami Ramdas who founded Anandashram in India. Among the many great things he said, this one stands out for me above them all. I may have the wording a bit wrong, but basically the message is:
Once you have set your feet upon the path, then you are already at your goal
Which is another way of saying that if you help one person, then you have already changed the world.
Over the years I’ve tried many types of meditation. But I always come back to the same method. I call it The Third Eye technique.
Once I’ve settled quietly, perhaps having taken a few deep breaths to relax a little, I bring my awareness to the centre of my forehead, the spot between my eyes. Traditionally, this is where the Third – or spiritual – eye is located.
(Actually that particular spot is in line with the Pineal gland which is located in the centre of the brain between the hemispheres, and its function is to help regulate sleep patterns.)
And then? Well, I know I’m not alone when I say that, no matter how hard I try, it seems a lot of the time nothing happens. Well, thoughts happen. Anxieties and memories intrude their pesky (and sometimes ugly) presence. So much for emptying the mind and having transcendental experiences.
Well, in fact despite evidence to the contrary, I – along with all of you who ‘try to meditate’ – do sometimes achieve a state of no thought, of total quiet. The problem is, of course, in a state where there is no thought it’s impossible to think: ‘Hey, I’m having no thoughts.’
As for the (rare) transcendent experience referred to: on those occasions something other than a thought, memory, anxiety, comes up; something that transcends those mundane ‘normal’ things.
See the tenderness. See the tenderness. See the tenderness.
These words seemed to come right after I’d thought for the millionth time ‘nothing’s happening’ while I tried to meditate one day a while ago.
Not spoken by a voice exactly, yet heard with my internal or mental ear. Clear and distinct; the same fully formed injunction repeated three times.
But, see the tenderness? I’m not sure where these words came from. The truth is I am a gentle person by nature; I am not naturally ‘tough’ or ‘aggressive’ or anything like that. But it’s also true that I’ve been all those things over long periods of my life. Nature vs nurture you see.
Anyway, what tenderness? Where? Does it refer to the tenderness that exists in the world?
Perhaps it’s to do with what I am supposed to be reading or otherwise taking in? Books, movies, and other story sources that speak of tender things and people?
Or might it be an injunction for me to redouble my efforts to turn away from the wold? To turn away from the horrors and the nastiness of Maya or the material and essentially illusory world?
And by this turning away from the world, perhaps tenderness is to be found and seen in a turning to the interior world, in the spaces of contemplation within Self.
This injunction (repeated emphatically three times. Sorry I already said that didn’t I?) does seem to have come from some part of my Self that longs for a gentler way to be, for a more tender way to relate to others and to Self.
Ideas and questions to contemplate and to reflect upon. Meanwhile, it’s a good start to know that even if my mind tells me otherwise, when I meditate, something is happening. Sometimes.
Well here we are at Part 3 of the mini series in which we’re looking at whether or not my ‘philosophy of life’ might be well described by living according to the vows used by many contemporary nuns and monks and that are a reinterpretation or evolution of the traditional vows.
As I’ve mentioned, I haven’t taken these vows, but when I learned about them (Simplicity, Purity, Accountability, and for some, Presence.) I thought I’d look at how well I live up to the life they dictate.
So, welcome. And if you haven’t yet seen the first two parts, please feel free to have a look at them. Part 1 is a sort of introduction and overview, while in Part 2 I asked whether or not I actually do manage to live a simple life.
Well, do I? To be honest, it was a nice challenge looking at that question; I mean it got me thinking about the reality of my life (like the rest of these posts will as well, obviously) and I would say yes, I think I do live a quite simple life, especially in the context of the dominant culture we live in, and society’s demands and pressures.
Anyway, time to get on with the next part of our little exploration.
Purity
Purity. It’s one of those words isn’t it? I mean, probably all of us think we know what it means, but it’s not a word we use on a day-to-basis is it? It’s a word we’d use rarely if ever to describe our behaviour or approach to life. So, what words do I use then?
Which reminds me: purity gets a bit of a bad rap I think. It’s often used to describe standards imposed by some group, or authority, a moral code thrust upon us, from someone or something outside of ourselves.
For me, Purity is really about my approach to life, to myself and other living beings, to the world, to everything actually.
So, with your permission I will try for the rest of this post to use words and ideas that actually mean something to me in my daily life and in the way I try to live.
Clean is a word that comes to mind. It sounds strange (and redundent) to say, but I try to live a clean life. Obviously I bathe regularly, wear clean cloths and try to not spill stuff too often. But, you might not know this, but clumsy is my middle name, so, yes spilling stuff is a curse I live with! (I just had an orange and I think more juice ended up on my shirt than in my mouth).
Now, actually that’s a good start: I mean to say, we’re all fallible beings; we all have things we can’t quite get right all the time: Pu … oops … the P word is a concept to hold on to in an aspirational way; it’s not a hard and fast set of rules or standards where I’m in a I am either, or I am not, scenario. Actually it’s very much to do with the present, but that literally is a story for another day isn’t it?
How else do I try to live clean? Thinking. I try, consciously, and all the time, to practise clean or we can say right thinking. Right thoughts about others, whether I like what they do or not. Right attitudes to others too are important aspirations for me as well.
To be truthful I’m not yet at the stage where I could say that having right attitudes to others has freed me to neither like or dislike people, situations, or whatever. Perhaps now and again, but certainly not all the time. Like everyone else I’m attached to my likes and dislikes, to my prejudices, and biases. As I said, it’s aspirational, something to work on continually.
Part of that right attitude, as well as living clean, is having a compassionate approach to other living beings. Meaning that with my actions, thoughts or behaviour I try to do as little harm as possible. Actually, it’s more than that: compassion for me must be an active thing, not just a vague feeling or intention informing my life.
In other words, I have designed my life (diet, clothing, transport, thinking, and the rest) so that I cause no more death or harm to any living thing than I can possibly manage.
Of course I realise we human beings are simply one more species among the many millions sharing this planet. Nothing any of us do in any sphere of life (our actions in the world, our thinking) can be accomplished without an impact on our fellow dwellers on Earth. All we can do is what we can do.
Aspiration. That’s what it boils down to for me. Did I mention it (you know … P) isn’t a you are or you are not kind of thing? Like the other P word, presence, it has at its main characteristic an ongoingness; there is no time when we can say I am P … .
Nor will there ever be a time when we can say in a way that that’s actually truth, ‘I give up, It’s too hard. I’m never going to be P… .
Which leads very nicely to Accountability, the next of our words to live by. But let’s get into that next time! Thank you sharing this time with me.
Notes from the Hermit's Cave 