Buddhism

June 1 – engaged Buddhism?

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“I will not turn against my brother for his creed or for his colour
Nor the one he takes his lover or his class
You that beckon me that way you shall not pass”

— Grace Petrie, They Shall Not Pass

“O, that my priest’s robe were wide enough
to gather all the suffering people
In this floating world.”

– Ryōkan Taigu (1758-1831)


Engaged Buddhism is a relatively new idea, having its origins in the anti-war activism of Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and comes out of the thinking that spiritual practice should not be separate from political action against the causes of suffering in the world.  Other teachers have drawn on this attitude and created Buddhist sanghas that actively include these principles or, in the case of Bernie Glassman’s Zen Peacemakers order, embody them completely.

However, it is fair to say that not all Buddhists agree with this philosophy, and many are vehemently against it, arguing that the Buddha himself did not involve himself in politics.  Some also see this push for social justice as making western Buddhism part of the political left-wing rather than being open to all. Continue reading →

April 23 – release

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“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.”

— Ajahn Chah (1918-1992), Thai Buddhist monk and teacher

“Let it go, let it go”

— Queen Elsa of Arendelle, fictional monarch and snow witch


This past week or so I have been feeling a lot sicker. The reason for that is my usual chronic illness rather than anything coronavirus related.

My muscles are more painful, weaker and shake more.

Mostly, I get used to my illness but there are times when it can make life thoroughly miserable. This has been one of those times.

So, with the limitless supply of Zen wisdom at my fingertips, how do I cope with those times?

Continue reading →

April 13 – every day is a good day

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In Japan there is a phrase Nichi nichi kore kōnichi which broadly translates as ‘every day is a good day’.  Klingons prefer Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam (today is a good day to die) which probably needs a long run up and mouthful of phlegm to do it justice, as well as a decent dose of warrior spirit!

Mostly I prefer the first, but with the current situation as it is, you would be forgiven for any reflections you may be having on mortality.

Continue reading →

April 6 – sky gazing

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“What were the skies like when you were young?
They went on forever and they, when I, we lived in Arizona
And the skies always had little fluffy clouds”

The Orb, Little Fluffy Clouds (Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, 1991)


From my long experience of chronic illness, I know the psychological impact of being confined indoors for extended periods of time.  I guess it would be more accurate to say that I know the psychological impacts on me, but many of the mental changes that I have experienced are shared with others in a similar situation.  With the current lockdown in response to the SARS CoV-2 pandemic, the effects of confinement on the general population are becoming increasingly noticeable.

While it is true to say that not everyone reacts in the same way to being kept inside, cabin fever is a well-known phenomenon, with the characteristic presence of irritability and restlessness.  I imagine many people are currently experiencing this, or noticing it in their partner, or others they are with in self-isolation/resting-in-place.

One of the things I have noticed about being shut indoors for long periods of time is that my mind becomes more closed in, more insular.  While the internet does give me access to the world outside of my door, I tend to stop thinking of life outside of my immediate vicinity. 

Continue reading →

April 1 – beautiful future

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“No rights were ever given to us by the grace of God
No rights were ever given by some United Nations clause
No rights were ever given by some nice guy at the top
Our rights they were bought by all the blood
And all the tears of all our
Grandmothers, grandfathers before”

— New Model Army, My Country (No Rest for the Wicked, 1985)


At present I am seeing a lot of posts on social media about what will happen after the current pandemic is over.  Given my friendship group, many are highly optimistic, predicting that this period of enforced isolation will give people time to reflect on what is most important to them and learning that they can live without many things they thought they could not, such as foreign travel, pasta and toilet paper. 

I would love to think this will be case but am nervous of making such bold statements as I remember what happened with the UK fuel crisis in 2012 which saw people queuing tens of cars deep at petrol stations for access to the limited supply on offer.  At that time, I heard many statements that it would be a wake-up call to how dependent we are on fossil fuels, particularly oil from the Middle East.  However, as soon as the crisis was over, it was quickly forgotten, and people carried on exactly as before.

Continue reading →

February 24 – take your medicine!

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Yunmen, teaching his community, said, “Medicine and disease cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself?”

— The Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku), case 87

“’He’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine!’ sang Roo happily, thinking it was a tremendous joke.”

— A A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner


When we get sick, at the most basic level we want to go to someone and be given something that will make us well.  This, essentially, is medicine. 

With many chronic illnesses we quickly learn that this kind of medicine does not exist and returning to health is not a simple matter of taking a tablet or popping a pill.  Rather it is more like a complete reappraisal of your life, finding the things that make you feel better, and pruning those which lead to a worsening of symptoms. 

Continue reading →

January 20 – the winds of pain

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“At the day’s end I found

Nightfall wrapped about a stone.

I took the stone in my hand,
The shadowy surfaces of life unwound,
And within I found
A bird’s fine bone.

I warmed the relic in my hand
Until a living heart
Beat, and the tides flowed
Above, below, within.

There came a boat riding the storm of blood
And in the boat a child,

In the boat a child
Riding the waves of song,
Riding the waves of pain.”

— Kathleen Raine ‘Three Poems of Incarnation’ I


Today I have a lot of pain. My muscles are weak, especially in my back. Everything feels tight and I will rest most of the day.

Before this illness, I was a relative novice when it came to pain.  Most of what I experienced in early life was the acute pain that comes from a relatively soft body meeting a rather harder object in the form of tables, pavements, tree branches and even the bony parts of other human beings.  The vagaries of chronic pain were certainly an unknown quantity.

Continue reading →

January 16 – body work

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“Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love”

— Jefferson Airplane


I started this blog out with the intention of writing about my experience of living with chronic illness and practicing Zen Buddhism but, as you may have noted, my mind seems to have other ideas and goes off on all kinds of tangents. 

For those of you who have practiced meditation, you can probably see a relationship between this and what happens when we try to get our awareness to rest on one particular thing, such as the breath.  We can do it for a short time and then find all kinds of apparently random thoughts coming up which have nothing to do with breathing! 

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January 5 – the burning world

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“We’ll walk a burning world where the sun shines darkness”

― Swans, Mona Lisa, Mother Earth (The Burning World, 1989)


Around two-and-a-half millennia ago in what is now Bodh Gaya, sometime after breakfast*, the Buddha spoke what has become known as The Fire Sermon**, or Adittapariyaya Sutta in Pali. 

The beginning of that sutta (or sutra in Sanskrit), runs as follows:

“Bhikkhus (monks), all is burning. And what is the all that is burning? “The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.”

He goes on to say the same about each of the other five consciousnesses (Buddhism has mind as a sense consciousness as well as the five we would usually consider), the ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. 

Continue reading →

January 4 – time of the dying

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“In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home”

― Led Zeppelin, In My Time of the Dying (Physical Graffiti, 1975)


I am coming to the end of reading In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.  Yongey Mingyur is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and abbot of Tergar monastery and the book is about his decision to go into retreat as a wandering aesthetic on the streets of India. 

Becoming sick with dysentery after eating leftover food, he finds himself contemplating death and the ways that Tibetan Buddhism prepares its followers to deal with that inevitability. 

Continue reading →