Cell

Today I noticed someone had been looking at this post on my blog, wondered what it was, and went back to take a peek myself.

I felt really surprised by how much had changed. I mean, days roll by and I go bumbling along being me, and things happen that get digested and integrated and cease to be a feature of note. But my room looks different now.

For a while I wasn’t in that room – sometimes in Komorebi, sometimes in a little ante-room off the Badger’s garret. But that attic nest is his reading nook now, where he holes up surrounded by his treasure-store of books; and Komorebi is in use for a variety of purposes. And my base is back in the little room over the street. We still have the wonderful shelves the Badger made, but they have moved into Alice and Hebe’s studio to store art supplies.

So this is what my room and all my things look like now.

If you’d asked me, I’d have said things were pretty much the same, but looking at the photos, it seems a lot different.

There’s also a very special thing in this room that you can’t see in any of these pictures, and I’ll show you that tomorrow.

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P.S.: Rebecca - here's the wall graffiti you asked to see - I did the lettering and Hebe did a fine job of painting it for me. Just in case it still isn't clear (I have only my laptop camera now), it says "foragers, scavengers, sages, seers; stealthy as shadows, quiet as mice".

"Stealthy as shadows, quiet as mice," is a quotation from this book. The graffiti as a whole is also a reminder to me of this chapter from the Tao.

Root teachers

I love Buddha statues. Wherever I live they tend to proliferate, gracing my home and garden.

I have been asked, “Why do you have those idols?” in a not especially friendly tone of voice.

But this is a misunderstanding.

The Buddha is not a god, and statues of the Buddha are not idols.

Idols are Hindu. In a Hindu mandir can be seen shrines to the differing aspects of the divine – Ganesh, Hanuman, and so on. The colourful statues in the shrines only become idols when they have been consecrated, at which point they are regarded as becoming holy, a concentration of the divine in the earthly realm. This is similar to holy water or the Eucharistic host in the Catholic Church; it is imbued with the holy upon consecration. Same idea.

But a Buddha is an awakened self. When Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism and also called the Buddha, was alive, people came to him mystified and intrigued because he was so special. They asked him, what are you? Are you a king? Are you a god? And he said to them: I am awake.

So the idea of a Buddha is similar to the concept of Christ-consciousness. It is an enlightened being. As St Irenaeus put it, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive”. That’s a good description of a Buddha.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the beautiful Zen teacher in France, not long ago wrote a very helpful article explaining that though people, as is perhaps only human, do often externalize and pray to the Buddha, in fact the Buddha is not a god but what he calls a ‘root teacher’. That would be like the still small voice Elijah experienced, or the spark of the divine George Fox spoke of, or the Spirit welling up to eternal life like a fountain at the core of one’s being, that Jesus described.

The statues of Buddha – at least, this is my understanding – are not there to worship. They are not the representation of a divine entity to which I might bow down.

The statues of Buddha around my house and garden say to me ~ Remember who you are … You are called to be holy … your being is fulfilled in peace … stay focused … wake up … keep watch … pray without ceasing … be what you profess to believe …

That’s what they’re there for ~ my ‘note to self’.

I have three quite large buddhas ~ one in the front garden, where we grow ferns and moss and a greengage tree; one in the downstairs passage through the house, one in the corresponding corridor upstairs (between the doors of my room and Fiona’s).

A very famous teaching of the Buddha was what is known as the Metta Sutta (the Buddha’s words on loving-kindness). From it comes the traditional Buddhist affirmation (or blessing, or prayer): “May all beings be at ease”

This is often developed into a longer, sometimes responsorial blessing ~ May all beings be peaceful; may all beings be happy; may all beings be well; may all beings be free … etc..

So it greatly pleases me, and seems entirely right and natural, that our house buddhas have developed an unexpected ministry, without having to do anything, just by being there (which is very Zen of itself; and quite Taoist withal). They provide shelter for frightened mice pursued by cats.

Our cats often bring in mice alive, and let them go indoors to play with ~ the outcome being terror and eventual death for the mouse unless we come upon the scene and intervene.

But sitting as the Buddhas do, between two door frames and in front of the skirting boards, the mice are able to take refuge with the Buddha, and there they are safe. The result of this is that from time to time we come upon one of our cats possessing himself in patience, sitting in solemn meditation before the Buddha.

A while ago, it had been my intention to part with one of the large Buddhas, just because problems arise where things accumulate, recollection of the divine is an interior thing, not exterior, and I try to keep to a discipline of simplicity not acquisition. But the day I had begun to put forth the intention of parting with the statue, our Alice told me of a little grey mouse that only the night before had saved its life by taking refuge with the Buddha ~ she had rescued it and carried it away to safe release (may all beings be happy … may all beings be at ease … may all beings be free …)

So it would seem that though they are not idols, only reminders of peacefulness and prayer, even so they are manifesting the kindness of holy hospitality, just by sitting there. Reminders of root teaching. In their stillness and silence the peace of refuge is made real.  

And may it be so with me.

Ideas, busyness and astonishing virtue

I thought you might like to see some of the domestic chores I’ve been occupied with since (hooray hooray) I finished my book and sent it in to the publisher. Ooh! Today is when they will have the first meeting to decide whether or not to accept it! It has to leap several hurdles before the final yea or nay is given.

So, something that has bothered me for a long time is the modern bathroom’s dislocation from Earth-friendliness. Not only do I want the bathwater I’ve washed in to go to the plants not the drain, I also want it to be at least in part our own harvested rainwater (free) rather than tapwater (bought) in the first place. Rainwater is supposedly soft and very good for washing your hair.

Having neither plumbing skills to effect a system converting our bathroom to accommodate this ambition, nor the money to pay someone else, I puzzled for a while what I could do.

Then I thought, plasterers have baths, don’t they? I googled, and it turns out – yes, they do. So I thought, well if I have a bath in the garden, it’ll be easy to use rainwater; and I can use the watering cans to fill it up and empty it onto the plants. I do like a nice warm bath, so that would be hot water from the tap half-and-half with rainwater from the roof.

There is one place in our yard where this can be done modestly, screened from view.  So I have turned it into what I think of as a Japanese bathroom – because some bathrooms in Japan have this rather rugged, outdoorsy, Zen-like aesthetic. And I like it a lot. Works well. It will be too cold in the winter of course, but handily, seeing the bath is entirely portable, I can take it inside by the fire then, can’t I?

I’m sorry the bath comes up as a white blank in the photo. No adjustment I can make improves its ontological recusion.

The same is true of this photo of my towel, which I have pegged out on the lemon verbena bush to dry. This is how they dried laundry in the Middle Ages, and it works jolly well. It scents the fabric more beautifully that any fabric conditioner, and sunlight bleaches and disinfects. Shame the towel looks like I’d sat down with a pair or scissors and cut it out of the picture.

The bath looks more believably existent in this shot of how it stands in between baths.

Now then, here’s the other thing I did – oh man, I am so proud of this!

Under our deck we had several years’ worth of accumulated wood, hard to reach, slowly rotting, a gathering ground for spiders, beetles and mahoosive slugs. Readers, I CLEARED IT OUT!!!! Took off my dress so I had just my leggings and top, and crawled underneath with a dustpan and brush and swept away all the compost the beetles and worms had been turning it into underneath.

I stacked it all in our woodstore, which is empty just now waiting for the new delivery of winter logs coming next month. So now we have to deal with it, and either cut it up for the fire or take it to be recycled at the dump – some and some, I expect.

This is not terribly innovative or exciting, I know, but I am so wildly pleased with myself I wanted to show you.