Category: musings

In medieval Japan one of the main reasons for practicing Pureland Buddhism was to have a good death. When I’m writing leaflets or emails about the Pureland Buddhist group I run here in Malvern I don’t mention death at all. Most of the people who come through the door of the shrine room aren’t looking for a good death; they are looking for other things.

This morning I sent out an email advertising a new set of mindfulness meditation classes. I didn’t mention death there either.

The sales pitch for Buddhism, and for the mindfulness classes I teach, is all about a good life: slow down, create space, and find peace.

I’ve had a few encounters with death recently, one literary, one physical and another via someone else’s grief.

For the past week or so I’ve been reading Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking. It’s a beautiful little book of prose from a poet and funeral director. Some of my great uncles were in the same trade, or at least used to provide a dressed up horse and carriage for the final journey of a number of lifeless Welsh bodies, thirty or so years ago. I have often thought if I wasn’t a Buddhist priest I might have become an undertaker. Lynch writes about taking care of the dead and the grieving with a tenderness that goes beyond the merely professional.  There is something of the Bodhisattva spirit in the attention he gives to the living, in the presence of death. The Undertaking reminds me that at the end of every life comes death, and that how we treat the dead and dying is a good measure of how we treat the living.

I’m not sure we treat the dying and the dead very well at all, these days. This afternoon I watched Big Fish for the first time. At the end of the film (don’t read the next few words if you haven’t seen it yet) the son of a dying man asks his mother, “How long has he got?”

“We don’t talk about that yet.” She tells him.

A couple of days ago someone drove their car into the back of mine. Not so much impact that either of us were hurt, but enough that I suspect their car will be written off.

I was slowing down, the car in front had slowed and stopped and was turning off the road. I glanced in my rear view mirror and could see the car behind was going too fast. My first instinct was to stop braking and create more distance between me and the car behind. My second instinct was to brake again;  I didn’t want to hit the car in front. I tried to brake just enough to stop before hitting the car in front, but not so hard that the impact from behind was made worse. That whole process took less time than it has taken me to write out these few sentences.

My back is still a little sore but it is the reminder of how close death might be that leaves the deeper mark. I have been to plenty of family funerals, sometimes for people who died relativity young (I was going to write, ‘who died too young’, but death’s scythe cares less about age than we do) and as a Buddhist priest I have been called to sit with the dying in Hospital. In all of these previous encounters I never saw my own mortality reflected back at me so clearly as I do now.

Thomas Lynch writes that when he was a young man he wanted to know how long his life would be, and created a formula. If you can recognise the middle of your life, he thought, just double that and you’ll reach the end point. What are the signs of this middle part of life? Being satisfied in where you are, noticing that the mind turns back to the past as often as it turns to the future, and perhaps a new awareness of mortality. I think I can tick the first and third of those boxes at the moment; with a new project on the horizon my mind is still turning more towards the future than the past. Although Lynch’s theory has a certain poetic beauty, I am not sure that death will pay much attention to it at all.

My third recent encounter with death was in Delhi. The son of a friend there was killed recently. I only managed to get a few moments alone with the bereaved father. We hugged and in that communication I understood as much as if we’d talked for hours.

In medieval Japan the point of a good death was to ensure a good rebirth. In a culture where being born into the right family made all the difference, where only men from the right families could become monks (mistakenly thought to be a pre-requisite for enlightenment) I can understand wanting to make sure you end up in the right place next time around.

Most of the people I speak to here in the UK don’t put much stock in the idea of rebirth, but that’s no reason to throw the idea of a good death away too.

Keeping the great leveler in mind can bring a tenderness to all of our interactions. Not only because it reminds us that everyone is carrying their own griefs, but also because it reminds us that time is limited: each moment of this life is unrepeatable.  Most of the beauty we encounter in this life is like the famous cherry blossom in Kyoto: it comes and then it goes.

What lasts beyond death is the spirit of things.  Hundreds of years ago the Japanese believed that the spirit in which you lived your last few moments made a big difference to where you next life would be. Each moment we live is like this. Live well now, live with love, and where you go tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, will be led by love.

Live well now and you will head towards a good death.

I think this is a formula that works both ways. Aim for a good death, and you will live well now.

 

 

 

…and everything seems translucent.

We think of our worlds as solid, but spending a week in a completely different culture reminds me of how provisional all of this is. The things we lean on are ghosts that we take to be real.

It’s late, but something is keeping me awake. Could be the small can of Coca Cola that I drank earlier, with CONTAINS CAFFINE stamped on the side? It’s possible, I’ve been off caffine for long enough that a regular cup of tea gives me a sleepless night.

The Coca Cola was given to me in the house of an old friend of Sahisnu’s; Rana Gupta. Their house was above a shop and was one of the nicest that I have been into in any of my trips to Delhi. I know there are much nicer houses that this one, but I’m used to living in the slums and this felt like a place in comparison. Marble floors, the biggest TV I have seen in a long time, and wallpaper – something I’ve never seen in an Indian home before.

I’m wondering what I have learnt about myself since I have been here.

I learn about myself in specific moments. This morning I thought I was being invited to talk at a school and my first response was resentment. I had got used to the idea that my last two days would be quieter and was even looking forward to that quite space (despite being frustrated earlier this week, in the spaces where there was less to do). It didn’t take long for me to convince myself that I could enjoy giving a talk, the school was an hour away and they wanted something on basic Buddhism… I could provide that, I thought, and it would be a good thing to do, dharmic work, even if it’s not directly supporting the Amida Buddhists here.

Of course once I was looking forward to it I realised that I hadn’t been invited at all. Suvidya had simply been telling me about something he would be doing in a few week’s time, once I have gone.

These specific moments give rise to more general learning. This one takes me back to the dream I had before coming out here: let go of your expectations.

I have learnt that I only feel competent in so many ways in the UK because I am embedded in systems which I understand and which support me. Here in India freed from those systems I sometimes feel under resourced and suddenly grateful for everything that holds my competence at home.

And of course, I am reminded of how provisional the life I have is. That if a just one or two conditions had been slightly different I might be living in poverty or in a society that is organised along completely different lines and with completely different assumptions to the one I usually call home.

 

After a fitful night’s sleep, with a couple of trips to the fridge for ice cold water, I woke up at seven am local time. It feels hotter than yesterday. It might not be at all, it may just be that I am simply feeling it is still too warm and thinking it’s hotter than ever is one way of processing that.

In the time of the British Empire, the British would retreat to the cooler hills. I can understand the sense in that, although I think there may have been a myth around that native Delhites could withstand the heat more easily, which I don’t think is true. No one here likes it this hot either.

It’s supposed to be monsoon season, but it has only rained three times this month, and the forecast is for more dry weather.

On the theme of expectations, Suvidya is supposed to be coming over this morning. That’s a reasonably easy expectation to hold lightly, as I still have five full days here to do what I came to do, which shouldn’t take all of that time.

A more difficult expectation to let go of is that it is possible for me to be self-sufficient here, or that I should be able to, and that it’s okay to ask for help when I need it. Not wanting to ask for help does come out of wanting people to see me in a particular way – or perhaps in wanting them not to see particular parts of me at all.

This was tested this morning as I struggled to close the tap on the water filter, having filled the kettle, a water bottle and then having a jug on the floor to catch the water as I struggled to close the tap I knew it was time to ask for help. And it wasn’t a problem at all.

All the evidence is that people are happy to help and I am more than looked after, so I know my fears are to do with my own bonbu nature, rather than any reality.

Even if it does become a problem to ask for help, in other people’s eyes, I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason not to ask anyway. Part of the practice of letting go of expectations is being able to be with whatever reaction occurs…

It’s Friday evening and I am in the first floor flat on the edge of a small town near Delhi. The flat is above the house of Prakash, one of our lay Order members, and I’m here to visit the local Amida group and give some training.

The last time I was in India was just over four years ago. I stayed for six weeks, in spring time and just as I left the temperature was tipping forty degrees. Now, at the tail end of August the temperature is the same.

I have never enjoyed pouring cool water over myself so much as I did earlier this afternoon. Within a few minutes of drying myself of I was too hot again. They say it’s the humidity that gets you and not the heat. There’s plenty of each here.

I’m immensely grateful for the cold water in the fridge just outside my door, and to Prakash, for looking after me so well.

The part of the trip I was most worried about – making sure I got here – is done, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. There was a moment, when Prakash didn’t answer his phone the first time I called, when I worried that I had somehow got hold of the wrong phone number. The driver of the taxi I had taken was anxious to leave me and get to his next job. I knew we were close to Prakash’s house. I suspected it was just a short walk away – but I wasn’t convinced I’d make it without a guide.

Prakash answered his phone and everything was fine. I probably shouldn’t have been worried though, even if he’d been unavailable for some reason most of the people here are so eager to help travellers like me that I’m sure I would have been safely delivered.

In the middle of last week, a few days before travelling, I had a powerful dream. I won’t go into the specifics here, except to say that it had a visionary quality to it and my teacher, Dharmavidya, appeared and told me to, “Let go of your expectations.”

Pertinent advice when I feel like I am reorienting my life around my ministry. I have a feeling the expectations referred to were about how I would like others to see me. That wasn’t explicit in the dream though, and letting go of expectations is good advice generally.

I was thinking about this advice yesterday. The Trust have given me some quite specific jobs to do while I am here, they are going to be financially supporting the group here more formally and have some things they’d like putting in place.

How do I let go of expectations and at the same time carry the expectations of the work I have been asked to do?

It’s about the difference between intention and expectation I think. The practice before me is to be clear about my intentions, without holding on to tightly to any specific ideas of how other people might respond to those intentions.