No past, no future

 

From time to time I log on to the US-based Buddhst website Tricycle (www.community.tricycle.com) and I've noticed that they've just started a forum on Zen teacher Susan Moon's new book "this is getting old: thoughts on ageing with humour and dignity".  I haven't yet read the book but I'm intrigued by it because the blurb I've been reading on the internet suggests that it can be fun to get old.  Nothing wrong with that of course - but what if you have dementia ?  Where's the humour and dignity in that ?  Maybe she deals with this in her book.

I wonder about the realtionship between the dharma and dementia because I've been caring for people in the advanced stages for over a decade now.  In the early years, I had this romantic notion that those who have dementia, always having to live their life in the immediate moment, might experience it as spiritual in some way.  But I no longer believe that.  If you want to know what's it's like to be looking after someone with advancing dementia there is lots to be learned in Andrea Gillies wonderfully honest account in her recent book "Keeper".  She and her family took on the care of her mother-in-law, Nancy, in an isolated house in the far north of Scotland.  It's an inspiring and brutally honest account of what she and her family took on written with a lot of humour.  Here's what she says about trying to spiritualise dementia:

"I sit with Nancy in front of the television and escape down my own wormhole, the one provided by the internet, laptop balanced on my lap. Somebody out in the odd, dislocated world of anonymous, typed-and-not-spoken conversation makes a light-hearted remark about the spiritual advantages of Alzheimer's.  I don't bother shouting him down, as I know from previous experience that hundreds will be racing to do just that.  Dementia carers are everywhere and fatuity isn't tolerated.  The person (no gender ascribed, even) makes the point that living in the moment, only in the Now, is surely the target state of Buddhist teachings; that Nirvana is a state of perfection attained by being cut off from the past and future and their attendant states of wanting and anxiety.  I can see what they're driving at and it's an interesting starting point for a discussion, but it's a debate that will never take place, as the self-appointed moral guardians that cluster at all such sites zoom in for the kill, hungry for the acclaim that will follow.  Unfortunately, a state of bliss isn't the end point of Alzheimer's.  Quite the reverse.  The reality of having no past or future is that it isn't a state of perfection but of absence.  The brain can't handle the absence and a chaotic, scrabbling sort of panic for order and meaning ensues.  The Buddhist idea of living in the Now is, surely, something achieved through dealing with past and future, and not their abscence - of quencing their demands and silencing their voices.  These are sleeping dogs, not missing dogs.  In a state of Nirvana we'd have control over them, reconciled, having triumphed.  An end to wanting and anxiety isn't ever going to be achieved through amnesia."

There's a lot of food for thought here I feel...

Reflection in the palm of your hand

A long-time Zimmer Zen Buddhist friend sent this wonderful photo and I just wanted to share it - enjoy.

Paul McCartney

A little taster of days gone by...

All Things Must Pass Away

As I'm still in Beatles mode, here's one of the songs I've chosen to be played at my funeral - not that I'll get to hear it of course...

When I'm 64

This is just for fun - and because Sir Paul McCartney (who says in the song that he would like to rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight) will be performing here next Sunday at the Isle of Wight Music Festival at the grand old age of 68 ...
Enjoy!

Meditation Rock

                                                                         

These past few weeks I've been experimenting with a different kind of meditation technique that I came across several years ago but didn't feel ready for at the time.  It's known as the "Rocking-Chair Meditation" and is ideally suited for Zimmer Zennists so I thought I'd share it with you.  Jim Pym, a Buddhist Quaker, writes about it in his book "You Don't Have To Sit On The Floor: Bringing the insights and tools of Buddhism into everyday life" which was published in 2001, and here's what he says:

"Many years ago I came across a book which advocated using a rocking-chair for meditation. I do not think that the book was Buddhist and the title of it escapes my memory.  In fact, I do not remember much about the book nor even the type of meditation that it proposed.  It was just this one idea, "rocking-chair meditation" that stuck in my mind.

Probably, one of the reasons why this idea stayed with me was that one of my first teachers had left me a rocking-chair in her will.  I still have it, and I do use it for meditation.  Usually I just sit in it.  There is something about rocking-chairs which helps the mind to become naturally still.  The only effort you have to use is the slight movement of rocking.  Even this soon becomes completely natural and effortless, and the mind can drift with the rhythm.

My rocking-chair is placed in front of a beautiful Tibetan thanka of Chenrezig, one of the forms of Avalokiteshvara.  The combination of gentle rocking and the warmth and beauty of the painting, combine to bring me to a state of deep meditation without any of the usual barriers.  This does not always work, but when it does it is something quite beautiful and unique.

The rhythm of a rocking-chair is suitable for reciting a mantra or short prayer.  After a while it becomes perfectly natural and you do not have to give it any thought.  Because of the painting of Chenrezig, I use the Mani Mantra or sometimes the Nembutsu, but you can use any mantra or prayer that has meaning for you.  One of the most important elements of mantra that is often overlooked is rhythm and the use of the rocking-chair brings out this aspect.  Rhythm becomes more than just an activity of the mind, as the gentle movement of the chair involves the whole body.  This adds a new and different dimension to the meditation, and is so pleasurable that it seems to ask for further practice.

Even without the mantra, the gentle rhythm of the chair is a great help to the meditative state of mind.  Dogen, the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, encouraged his disciples to "just sit" in zazen, without any effort to do anything else.

An old man used to sit for hours in his rocking-chair on the veranda of his house.

His young nephew asked him one day what he did there.

'Sometimes,' he said, 'I sits and thinks.

And sometimes I just sits.'

Meditating in a rocking-chair is a bit like both.

You might ask, 'what has this to do with Buddhism ?'  The answer is probably nothing, but it does have a lot to do with Dharma.  Dharma is the discovery of the naturalness of life, and there are few better vehicles to do this than a good rock on an old reliable chair.  It feels like a chariot that carries its user to realms that are at the same time beyond this world and right here and now.  Mindfulness is natural in a rocking-chair, but at the same time the rhythm and comfortable feeling combine to transport us beyond our usual consciousness.

If part of Western Buddhism is to discover the Dharma in our everyday lives, then I am sure that rocking-chairs will have a role in the future.  A good rocking-chair is so ordinary, and yet it reminds us of an extraordinary state of mind which, if not already enlightened, is certainly on the way."

You Don't Have To Sit On The Floor: Bringing the insights and tools of Buddhism into everyday life.

Jim Pym (Rider 2001).

Why not give it a go...