— XTC, Making Plans for Nigel (Drums and Wires, 1979)
Woody Allen once said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. Mr Allen has (rightly in my opinion) rather fallen out of favour in the modern world and I find myself unable to watch Manhattan again without feeling distinctly queasy. The issue of separating an artist and their work is one for another day, but knowing that Mariel Hemingway was seventeen in that film, and Allen 44, is pretty discomforting. This quote, however, is apposite, and well above the age of consent.
As much as I admire creative writers and visual artists, I was born with a brain that runs on logic (well, logic and 85% cocoa dark chocolate). Even as a child, I remember looking up at the tiled ceiling in my bedroom and looking for patterns. I suppose that might sound artistic in some sense, but I was looking for mathematical patterns and similarly found joy in the fact you could play with numbers in ways that had a satisfying logical consistency.
In Robert Macfarlane’s book Landmarks, each chapter has a glossary of different British words related to the natural environment. The glossary for coastlands has the interesting Gaelic (Gàidhlig) word combarran:
Combarran twin markings on land used to give an offshore boat its location
All of us have marking points in life which are our touchstones, anchors to what makes us the people who we are. These may well change through life as we age and grow, and some will remain constant. No one has the same touchstones as anyone else, although we may meet individuals whose bearings are similar, and these people often become friends, companions and lovers.
– Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin IV, 1972)
When I first started my PhD in biology there was someone in the same research corridor just finishing writing his thesis on the role of hedgerows as wildlife corridors in the UK. Since much of Britain (excluding some areas of Scotland and Wales) are densely populated, natural locations are often turned into wilderness islands by the surrounding built-up areas. Hedgerows can act as conduits between these areas for small mammals and reptiles to travel in and are valuable wildlife habitats in their own right.
If you ever wish to roughly determine the age of a hedgerow (and why wouldn’t you?), there is a method called The Hooper Formula which suggests that the number of woody species in a 30 yard length of hedge equals the age of the hedge in centuries. Thus, a hedge with just one species in a thirty-yard length is likely to be 100 years old or less, whereas a one thousand year old hedge will probably contain ten to twelve distinct species in the same distance. The formula has been established as a pretty good rule of thumb although it tends to lose accuracy for any hedge older than a thousand years.
— The Velvet Underground and Nico, Sunday Morning (The Velvet Underground and Nico, 1967)
The second Sunday of the year has, for the past decade or so, been the date of the annual Jukai ceremony for Treeleaf Zen sangha (community). On Friday I talked about the full moon observance of the Buddhist training rules (precepts) and Jukai is the ceremony during which people first commit to following the precepts.
For the three or four months from the beginning of the autumn practice period (Ango) until now, those people wanting to take Jukai in the following January study each of the precepts and sew a ceremonial garment, known as a rakusu, to wear around their neck after that time, in Buddhist practice and meditation.
“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
― HH XIVth Dalai Lama
As much as this blog is supposed to be about anything, it is a journal about my illness and Zen practice. I am not sure I have entirely been focusing on that thus far so am going to try to keep more on track from this point onwards. So, today, I intend to set out what a day in the life of a chronically ill Buddhist looks like, or at least one that looks a bit like me.
Some of you know me fairly well. Others not so much. So, some of this information may come as a surprise or not at all.
My illness is one involving limited amounts of energy and very limited muscle stamina, especially in my legs. I sleep and rest a lot. I am pretty much confined to one room and rarely leave my flat/apartment due to limited mobility. I am fortunate in having a bedroom door that leads to the outside world, and a rural location replete with trees, birds and squirrels.
— The Waterboys, The Whole of the Moon (This is the Sea, 1985)
The moon becomes full at 19.21 tonight in the UK, something you may or may not be aware of, depending on how much you look at the sky at night (and how cloudy it is).
Our distant ancestors worshipped the moon as a deity, whereas now we have a more scientific understanding of how it orbits the earth (in a cycle of 27 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes), producing the different phases from new to full and back again based on the relative position of the sun. Most of us have also grown up familiar with pictures of the Apollo 11 moon landing, now over half a century ago, and Neil Armstrong’s first human steps on its rocky surface.
However, just as knowing that flowers are plant reproductive organs that produce nectar and perfume to attract pollinators does not detract from their beauty, so the vision of the moon in the night (or day) sky still has the ability to take our breath away and inspire great poetry.
Full Moon and Little Frieda*
by Ted Hughes
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket – And you listening. A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath – A dark river of blood, many boulders, Balancing unspilled milk. ‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work That points at him amazed.
*Little Frieda Hughes, the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, was born in 1960 and grew up to be a successful painter and poet in her own right.
Before we adopted the solar calendar in the west, time was measured by the phases of the moon (I doubt it will surprise many people that the word ‘month’ has its origin in ‘moon’) and many countries and religions still use lunar time. Chinese New Year and the annual date of Passover and Easter (Passover begins on the night of a full moon after the northern vernal equinox) are entirely dictated by lunar time.
Buddhism has a similar reliance on the moon for religious observances and it is traditional for both lay and monastic Buddhists to observe Uposatha days on the occasion of the full and new moon, with a greater intensity of practice and (for lay followers) an adherence to monastic precepts for the day.
In Sōtō Zen, only the day of the full moon is observed, with a ceremony known as Ryaku Fusatsu, in which we go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma (Buddhist teachings) and Sangha (Buddhist community) and re-commit to the ten major precepts (training rules) which constitute:
not killing
not taking what is not yours
not misusing sexuality
not speaking falsely
not misusing intoxicants
not blaming others
not praising self at the expense of others
not being possessive
not indulging anger
not maligning the Three Treasures – Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha
The precepts are to be kept in our heart in every moment, but the full moon is a time of reminding ourselves what the training rules are and why we take them.
In Zen Buddhism, the moon is also symbolic of enlightenment, perfectly reflecting the light of the sun, just as the awakened mind reflects the totality of existence without partiality or judgement.
The thirteenth century Zen master Eihei Dōgen put it as follows:
“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.”
Since the moon becomes full later today, this morning I lit incense and reflected on how well I have kept the precepts over the last month, and promising to follow them as best as I can until the next full moon.
— Julian Cope, I’ve Got My TV and My Pills (Interpreter, 1996)
I was sad to read about the death of writer Elizabeth Wurtzel on Tuesday of this week. She is probably best known for her 1994 book Prozac Nation which chronicles her experience of atypical depression and its treatment, and made her something of a Generation X icon. Drawing on work such as Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, it is a frank and self-absorbed confessional which opened the door wide to that genre of writing. The fact that her subsequent books did not do as well was partly due to the greater crowding of the marketplace under her influence. It may also have been that an attractive twenty-seven year-old (her age at the time of Prozac Nation’s publication) and debut author was easier to market than an older woman.
The trouble with having a chronic illness is that you often cannot tell what is a new and significant symptom, and what is part of the ever-changing smörgåsbord of joy served up by your pre-existing condition.
So, today, when I started to experience bad chest pain and finding it harder to breathe, I called a friend to talk to me until the pain went, except it didn’t. So, he suggested I call an ambulance and they suggested I go to hospital, so that is what I did.
Four hours later, after several electrocardiogramsin the Accident and Emergency department* of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother hospital in Margate, I was informed that I am unlikely to die today, and probably not tomorrow either. The doctor also gave me some helpful signs to tell a cardiac event from the kind of chest tightness caused by muscle pain, prodding me in the pectorals several times to demonstrate this!
― Alice Cooper, School’s Out (School’s Out, 1972*)
Okay, I will admit that the above song lyric does not entirely fit but, in my defence, there was no song about going back for the spring term after Christmas!
Yesterday marked the beginning of the second full school term in the British school year (well, English, I do not know if the Scottish system follows a similar pattern). I still have two school age children, one of whom will be sitting his GCSE (General Certificate of School Education) exams in May/June 2020.
For those unfamiliar with the education system here, GCSEs (which themselves replaced and integrated the General Certificate of Education, GCE, and Certificate of School Education, CSE, in 1988) are the exams which are sat at the end of year 11 of school during which a pupil turns sixteen.
― Buddhist Prajñāpāramitā (Perfection of Wisdom) mantra
My mother’s brother died yesterday. I don’t exactly know how old he was, but he was substantially older than my mother, who is herself in her 70s.
Uncle Tony had a pretty tough life, at one point being declared missing in action during the Suez Crisis in 1956. After leaving the army he worked in heavy industry in Lancashire and fathered four children, my cousins, three boys and a girl. Two of his sons saw action themselves as part of the British army, in the Falklands conflict (1982) and Gulf War I (Desert Storm, 1991).
Sadly, the marriage ended badly but Tony continued to work hard to support his family. As a child I remember trips to Lancashire to visit them and, although it was somewhat of a culture clash for my family of soft middle-class southerners, I always enjoyed seeing my cousins and uncle, and am still in touch with some of them.
Living With Narwhals 